Despite what the worldwide economic crisis has done to the price of a barrel of oil, the United States of America needs to become energy independent. Yes, that is a trendy thing to say. Reality is that we aren't going to be energy INDEPENDENT for a very long time, if ever. We can make massive strides towards producing more of our own energy and not buying hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign oil per year.
The thing that gets me is that neither presidential candidate (yeah, sure, there are more than two...) is making this a focus of their campaign. Energy is a big deal and is a major factor of this economic crisis.
Let's look at the "Big Three" (energy plans, that is). I was going to do them all in one post, but it would be a mammoth that nobody would read. So I'll do one plan per post in a little series. Now you have something to look forward to.
Our next President, Barack Obama: His plan is outlined here. The highlights:
Well, now we can all rest easy. There will be absolutely no transitional periods, times when things are going to be painful, nobody will be out of a job, no new taxes, and flowers will spontaneously bloom across America. In my opinion, Obama's plan is by far the most vague and useless. Obama's plan will do nothing except ensure that our economy utterly collapses.
Here are some problems: Bullet 1) NO MORE FREAKING GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION!!! It has been demonstrated quite effectively that when the price of gas gets too high, people will figure something else out. Take the bus, carpool, walk, run, bike, move closer to work, stop buying things we can't afford, etc. We can handle it. We don't need the federal government stepping in with checks to help us fuel our addiction to oil. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.) Barack is in favor of taxing businesses for being overly successful and transferring that wealth to all the people that buy that businesses product. This is right up there with the dumbest things I've ever heard. Equivalent: You buy a house and live in it for several years. You sell your house for a $20,ooo profit. Barack feels you made too much money on that deal, so you are taxed and the people who bought your house get a rebate.
Bullet 2): That isn't enough money. And the vast majority of the money should be coming from the private sector. Perhaps subsidize some things to get them up and running, but let's not keep up with the government-buying-private-businesses crap.
Bullet 3): He wants to accomplish this by making fuel milage standards better. More MPG. However, he wants to do this by dumping $4 billion (with a "B") into the automakers' wallets to "help them out". C'mon. Our current MPG isn't a problem. If people don't want to buy $4 gas, they buy Priuses or Fits or Yarises or whatever. They get over 30 MPG, which I'm sure is way above whatever the dumb government fuel standard is. (And everybody knows that the MPG limits are set by CA anyways, Barack...)
Bullet 4): He wants to get 1 million plug-in hybrids on the roads within 7 years (i.e. 143,000 per year). Oh, but there is only one such vehicle that is currently going to be mass produced (Chevy Volt) and it isn't coming out until 2010. Oh, and there are more than 250 million cars on the roads. So getting 0.4% of them running on electricity in 7 years is gonna do a lot. Oh, and electricity doesn't come from thin air (well, not most of it anyways), so we are still gonna be using fossil fuels to make the power to move the Volt.
Bullet 5): Good idea, bad plan for implementation. Because there isn't one. He will "weatherize homes", build an Alaskan natural gas pipeline, and develop clean coal. I'm counting ZERO renewable energy sources there. This is the only point with promise, but also the only point with no substance at all to back it up.
Bullet 6): This gets more into the environmental issue rather than the energy issue, but this basically dittos my thoughts on 5. Sounds great (other than my being mostly dead by 2050), but he doesn't have any ideas to get it done. He proposes a cap-and-trade system; at least that leaves the innovation up to the innovators and out of the hands of the government (potentially).
Bottom line: This plan does not do nearly enough, and it does it way too slowly. Overall, F+ to D-.
Obama's Energy
Posted by Joel on 10/24/2008
Labels: energy crisis, environmentalism, obama
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6 comments:
Joel, great post and review of the obama plan. I've noticed this trend with Obama and politicians in general, saying what sounds good to the masses during an election year but having no real feasible plan to back it up or logical reasoning for it. Luckily for Obama most Americans are lacking in the logic department.
Uh, yeah, but what about inflating tires??
Good post, Joel. It looks like Obama won't need to worry about bullet #1 (unless he insists on it just as another way to "spread the wealth around"). It costs $50 less to fill my Suburban now than when I bought it! That's $100 less per month! (Yes, I did say Suburban. Some of you may remember that after I crashed my mini-van, I had a hard time deciding between Suburban and another mini-van. We got the used Suburban for a screaming deal because noone wants them, and it only gets about 2-3 miles per gallon less than the Sienna and Odyssey in the city. Now that gas is nearly half what it was at the time I bought the Suburban, I am thinking it was a fairly wise investment . . . Plus, in about 5 years when I am ready to replace it, technology will catch up, and I'll replace it with something eco-friendly).
Anyways, I really, really hope that our country doesn't do what we did after the 70s and just go back to our old habits because oil is becoming cheaper. I plan to keep on my congressmen to push for alternative energy WHILE pushing for expanded domestic drilling and doing all we can to become independent of the Middle East.
Joel,
Thanks for bringing this up. I don't think Obama's plan is perfect - far from it - but your critique has a lot of holes in it.
1) You say "NO MORE FREAKING GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION", but if we don't have government intervention, we will not become energy independent. Period, end of topic. The market for alternative energy sources barely exists because fossil fuels are still affordable and will be for the near future.
2) $150B isn't enough? Where is the extra going to come from? Private money will only come when there is a market, and there won't be a sustainable market in the near future unless the government artificially creates one.
3) Without assistance, GM, Ford, and Chrysler are going to go the way of the dodo. Argue about whether or not the government should bail them out all you want (remember that 500,000 employees' livelihoods are on the line), but I would argue that if you do, a great way to do it would be to tie the money to strict and aggressive mileage requirements.
4) Plug-in hybrids are not the long-term answer, but they at least start to loosen the stranglehold that oil has on the American way of life. They start to shift back to reliance on the electrical grid, and if we can modify our grid to be based on renewable resources and nuclear instead of coal/natural gas, we'll kill two birds with one stone.
5) Clean coal and natural gas are not renewable, but they are Made In America - no importing required. We get so much of our electricity from coal and natural gas that we can't expect to cut them out anytime soon. These are bridge technologies.
6) A cap-and-trade system is absolutely the way to most efficiently cut greenhouse gas emissions. No, it wasn't his idea, but there is a lot of support for this on both sides of the aisle. I would be surprised if this is not implemented before Obama's first term is over.
I agree with you on one thing, Joel - the windfall profits tax is a stupid idea. I would much rather just see a larger tax on gasoline that funds renewable energy R&D. We have seen that higher gas prices change consumer behavior; if oil importation is really that big of a problem (I think it is), let's keep prices artificially high and use the revenue to fund the alternative.
Dave,
One quick disagreement, or perhaps clarification, on government involvement.
An example: Oil shale is profitable with oil prices as low as $35 a barrel. Yet government won't allow its extraction and use. Government is pretty much the only thing standing in the way of the United States and 2 billion barrels of oil shale oil.
Joel, I really appreciated your post - This deficiency is something that has really been keeping me on the sidelines of the Obama bandwagon. That and his poor healthcare plan. I like his ideals, but I think this is just something that is convenient, and not really going to do alot - I appreciate where you are coming from.
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