Great! And it will take how long to build them and put them in place. Existing tracks are no good for them, so we have to rip up all the old tracks to put in new ones. That would bring most train travel to a halt for at least a few decades. Okay let me ask this another way. What alternatives do we have that is available that will reduce our air travel that does not require oil in some form or another?



Yet she is telling her people in weak seats to promise drilling and that she would take the heat because her seat is not in jeopardy this election.

The problem is that the alternatives were needed back in the 70's to be useful today. Since the democrats failed to see this and act upon it becasue they wanted to push conservation rather than drilling we are now stuck with what they wanted and no one seems happy with this. They wanted 5 dollar a gallon gas to make us get off of oil. They almost have it at the cost of everything else.

Knowing WHAT is not the same as knowing HOW.

I couldn't agree more. We should have been building nuclear plants for the past 30 years but too many people complain when they start hearing about them. People don't want them built anywhere near them because of images of 3 mile island. Then you also get the eco-extremists complaining about disposing of nuclear waste. The bottom line here is that nuclear is the most viable alternative to oil that we currently have yet the country seems unwilling to build the plants necessary. It's rather sad if you ask me.

Which is sad. Pelosi needs to go. Her refusal to allow a vote on certain bills is ludacris. She deserves her job less than any of the others in the House (and I don't think any of them really deserve their jobs). She needs to go.



Yet another proposal for an alternative that there is no infrastructure for. Once again you cannot cease a current techonology/resource without providing a viable alternative to it immediately. you can't stop oil production/consumption without a viable alternative, or alternatives, to pick up the slack and you can't shut down the airline industry until you have some form of mass transit available to pick up the slack.

Nuke Bus? Supertrains?

Ok, how about a VIABLE alternative to domestic flight.

Good one.

Don’t be so picky!   

Balloons! In all seriousness, you keep holding onto the status quo; no one's arguing that oil is currently the bases of all our energy needs, but stop with the devil's avocate--we doneed alternatives and the sooner the better.

Yes, so why didn't we listen to Carter?--and Nixon, for that matter.

Classic!!!  

Oh, you've been ashamed of me many times before, Mr. Ostensibly Moderate.  

Because at the time the congress wanted to gain the environmentalist vote. They wanted to stop oil usage, and they wanted to stop nuclear power. They got both.

I don't think anyone is arguing that we don't need alternatives as soon as possible, only that we don't have any alternatives that are available at the moment and due to that we need to increase oil production to lessen our dependence on foreign oil until the alternatives are ready.

Very reasonable; incidentally, Obama has come around to that.

That's not too much of an issue atm though (if the goal is to switch from oil to renewables); let's say that the technology for electric airplanes or planes running off some alternative (potentially renewable) energy is still years away. There're still plenty of other areas where oil is used for which renewable energy could be used, with cars and home energy use (heating, appliances, etc.) being obvious examples. If all of the areas where you could use renewable energy were switched to renewables from oil, then you've got a massive reduction in oil consumption. So it's not so much an issue of whether it would be possible to have a massive switch to renewables, but more whether it would be affordable (i.e. what's the difference between the cost of renewable energy and energy from oil).



You contradict yourself here. The higher the price of oil, the bigger the incentives for alternative energy, since the less costly they become relative to oil (e.g. let's say it costs $2 for a unit of oil energy and $3 for a unit of renewable (non-oil) energy. If the price of oil doubles to $4 per unit, renewables will be taken up, since a firm wouldn't be maximising their profits by failing to. Hence, if offshore drilling would not bring down the cost of oil/energy in general as you claim, then it's not going to affect the incentives for renewables. Of course the point is fairly moot since due to the simple laws of supply+demand if the supply is increased, the price will fall, all else equal (while even if prices rise due to say increased demand from the likes of China, the resulting prices will still be lower than if you hadn't had that increase in supply).

Edit: Forgot at the time of posting this thread was 5 pages long. Sorry if I've repeated things already covered in those 5 pages (

This is a point I have wanted to address but keep forgetting. There is no such thing as renewable energy. Once spent it is gone. The microbes that make oil create new oil fields just as man replants corn to make a bio-fuel. It is all renewable depending on the consumption rate. Right now the oil comes out of the ground whether we pump it or not. Burning it only makes it less messy than if we let it pool on the ground as we did before someone found a way to make that mess useful.

The next alternative energy source will be just as oil was in the beginning. Something that no one wanted around making it cheap. As it becomes more useful people will find more uses for it. Slowly the change will occur and oil will fall by the wayside as our primary energy source. As that happens it will become more expensive, and when we are totally switched over to the new energy source we will have the same arguments over that source as we are having over oil.


Remember when a VTR cost 1500 dollars then someone came up with the VCR and no one wanted the VTR, VCR’s cost 1500 to start with and when the DVD came out you can now get a top of the line VCR for about 30 dollars. Remember the old TV sets that cost 2000 dollars? How much do they cost now with the advent of the plasma and LCD televisions and monitors? Good silicon chips are made from sand the same sand on any beach. Because there is competition for the stuff between the chip makers and the solar panel makers the price is very high. It is still just sand.