With the recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast we are again reminded of the vulnerability of our oil supplies. Off shore drilling rigs are damaged or float away. Refineries are sometimes damaged and usually shut down for days at a time. Transporting oil and gas becomes a huge problem in the effected areas. There’s a run on gasoline by the people evacuating. If that’s not enough, there is price gouging and speculators on Wall Street causing gas prices to go up even more.
Anyone who has followed the debate over more drilling has heard the pros and cons. Pro = lower gas prices and less dependence on foreign oil. Con = environmental concerns and the lower gas prices would not come for years, not now when we need it the most. There are a couple of things that I haven’t heard enough about.
The first thing is why would the oil companies spend their record profits on drilling for more oil when they know that by the time it gets to market a large part of the population will have switched to newer, more advanced, clean technology? This doesn’t make sense unless threatening to declare bankruptcy and counting on a big government bailout is part of their business plan. As T. Boone Pickens has pointed out, the smart money is on clean technology, not antiquated oil and coal.
The other thing is conservation. There seems to be a growing consensus in Washington that eliminating the bans on off-shore drilling and drilling in ANWAR is the answer to our energy problems, though I’ve never heard of any real effort for a government conservation plan. During WWII, there was a big government push on conservation of resources. Of course there was rationing but the rationing was accepted, in part, because the government made people feel it was their patriotic duty. I’m not calling for rationing but having a government sponsored public relations push would make a lot of sense. My Dad told me a story of the WWII days when the federal government would hold big, nighttime pep rallies in large stadiums. They would hand out cigarette lighters to everyone who came in and after giving their speeches on what a difference ordinary people could make if they worked together, they would have everyone light their lighters at once. He said the stadium lit up brighter than daylight.
Putting my tree-hugging tendencies aside, conservation just seems like the more practical and logical choice. It is a choice. We can pressure our leaders to make efforts in that direction. If that doesn’t work we can always just do it ourselves.
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