Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

Corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. We ought to be importing Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol.

However, my man Obama is in bed with the ethanol lobby. He offers the same nonsensical arguments in favor of "energy independence" that every other politician uses to justify inane, market distorting policies.

For the millionth time on this blog: energy is essentially fungible. You can buy it on world markets. The key is to use less of it, not worry about where you're buying it from.

Of course, no politician is perfect. I just hope that Obama recognizes this nonsense for what it is, pandering to improve his election chances, rather than actually believing that corn ethanol is a good idea. In other words, I hope Obama's being craven instead of stupid.

Labels: ethanol, Obama, oil

I'm going to quote Charles Kauthammer at some length:

"Gas is $4 a gallon. Oil is $135 a barrel and rising. We import two-thirds of our oil, sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the likes of Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. And yet we voluntarily prohibit ourselves from even exploring huge domestic reserves of petroleum and natural gas.

At a time when U.S. crude oil production has fallen 40 percent in the past 25 years, 75 billion barrels of oil have been declared off-limits, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That would be enough to replace every barrel of non-North American imports (oil trade with Canada and Mexico is a net economic and national security plus) for 22 years.

That's nearly a quarter-century of energy independence. The situation is absurd. To which John McCain is responding with a partial fix: Lift the federal ban on Outer Continental Shelf drilling, where a fifth of the off-limits stuff lies."

No matter how often their ideas are discredited, there are still some who believe that we can drill our way out of our energy problems. Rather than make the argument(s) again, I instead propose that you read the following article from Mother Jones: The Seven Myths of Energy Independence.

Labels: Krauthammer, oil

Watching our esteemed president further tarnish his legacy is usually humorous in a morbid sort of way. I secretly enjoy opening the newspaper to discover whatever fresh outrage against decency and sound policy has been cooked up in the West Wing today for sale to the public. Here is a perfect example:

"President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling and open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, asserting that those steps and others would lower gasoline prices and “strengthen our national security.”"

It would take years for any oil discovered in these places to come on-stream, making the claim about current, high gasoline prices ludicrous on its face. This is another in a long list of blatantly outrageous claims that the Bush Administration knows it can foist on an American public that is insufficiently well-informed to understand and disbelieve them (kind of like the subtle and not-so-subtle linking of Iraq to 9/11).

The claim about national security is also meaningless. Oil is a commodity traded around the world. From the perspective of American consumers, it doesn't matter very much where supply is located, just that it exists (if it's not near us, consumption of it by the people it is near will displace their consumption of oil that is closer to us). The real question is whether the modest amount of oil that drilling in ANWAR and off our coasts would produce would have any more than a marginal effect on the world price of oil. And the answer is: No.

Our problem is our total dependence upon a non-renewable, dirty form of energy that is controlled by screwed up countries. (I was going to write "happens to be controlled", but having oil actually positively causes countries to be screwed up. This is not just coincidence or correlation, but causation.)

Sucking up a bit more oil from our parks and shorelines in a vain effort to decrease the world price by a few pennies is not the answer. Investing in technology and infrastructure to get us off oil once and for all IS the answer.

Labels: ANWAR, Bush, oil