The Oil Endgame
After viewing Amory Lovins' Ted Talk on Winning the Oil Endgame, I downloaded and printed the book. It's free. Basically, with innovative engineering and some focused determination,
Lovins says the "United States can get completely off oil and
revitalize its economy -- led by business for profit and by the
military for effectiveness and conflict prevention." Great quote. But I
like his ending quote even better: "The US has more market power than
OPEC. Ours is on the demand side. We are the Saudi Arabia of mega
barrels. We can use less oil faster than they can conveniently sell
less oil ... this is an oil endgame we should all be playing to win."
Love it.
At this point, the American people should demand nothing short of a comprehensive policy to rid the country of oil so we have 100% energy independence. 100%. Period. Could you think of a more effective economic and national security policy than energy independence? Or, of course, we can continue to fight wars over a scarce resource and align ourselves with dictatorships to use a product that causes disease and harms the environment.
At this point, the American people should demand nothing short of a comprehensive policy to rid the country of oil so we have 100% energy independence. 100%. Period. Could you think of a more effective economic and national security policy than energy independence? Or, of course, we can continue to fight wars over a scarce resource and align ourselves with dictatorships to use a product that causes disease and harms the environment.
If only that pack of traitorous whores in congress and the Torture in Chief in the white house would stay out of the way, the US could remain a super power and achieve energy independence.
Posted by Kudzu Fires on May 27, 2008 at 01:57 AM JST #
The country is ridden with lobbyists and profiteering politicians in cahoots with the oil industry execs who have seen windfall profits for the last 8 years. No coincidence that the Bush administration has been at the helm for 8 years and has done little but lip service to this major problem. Blaming countries like India and China (while that may be true to a certain extent), without looking at the effects on price of a depreciating currency does not solve this problem. The masses in the country seem to take these wool-over-face comments on face value.
Any effort to get alternative energies development and usage expedited is stonewalled into the backburner with an occassional technology demonstrator to mislead people, which they claim will take a decade or more to productize. Our representatives in the Govt. could care little about the situation the country is in. Notice the highways this weekend? Its rather empty. Hopefully this will make the politicians see how we can control energy demand. :)
On the other side of this problem are environmental groups such as the Sierra clubs who are increasingly looking for opportunities to make more money legally and preventing any legitimate progress in the search for resources such as natural gas.
Harnessing alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cells is very slow with the investments being miniscule compared to the money made with a high demand resources such as oil.
We dont see any effort being put by industries into co generation plants to harness the thermal and steam energy that comes out of their chiminies. This in itself will be a great contribution to reduction of oil demand. Proactivity is the name of the game but we are unfortunately a country that has gotten used to consuming things super size.
I hope your blog and the book help people see the frustration ongoing in this part of the world.
Posted by frustrated joe on May 27, 2008 at 02:06 AM JST #