If they started drilling today, it would still be a few months before the oil flowed and prices were affected. But since everyone would be able to know it was coming, much of the effort going into alternatives would dissipate.
We need to find the alternatives as soon as possible. It is likely that there will always be a need for oil for one purpose or another and we will one day be glad we still have oil available to us.
Certainly alternatives need to be found. One of the things Michio Kaku points out in The Physics of the Impossible is that if a civilization is to be successful, out-living even its own home planet, they will eventually need to find a way to make use of close to 100% of the energy the sun provides that planet.
It’s mind boggling how much energy is poured upon the earth freely every day by the sun, but so little is done to make use of it.
…
Still, yes, drilling in America would take several months for it to affect prices, but there would still be people who are pressing for alternatives, and they’d be able to do so without the voices of those who are sick of $4.00 fuel in their ears.
Agree!!! It’s ridiculous that we are protecting an area (ANWR) that sees less than 1500 visitors a year and thereby holding an entire nation hostage to middle east oil.
It has never occurred to me that we protect ANWR for the benefit of visitors. I thought we protected it (and a few other places) simply for the virtue of its existence. That there are at least a few places on the globe that have not been directly fouled by mankind’s activities seems worthwhile to me.
Visitors simply make the job of protection harder.
“there would still be people who are pressing for alternatives,”
Yes. There have been people pressing for alternatives for decades, but it is only when energy prices are high that they get any real traction (read $$ invested). Lots of creative ideas received funding in the seventies, but as soon as energy prices went back down, all of that progress stopped.
Right now everyone wants alternatives. But if the price of gas goes down, the sale of SUVs will jump in a hurry.
There was an article in the paper yesterday (or so) that discussed how some manufacturers are bringing jobs back to the US that they had sent to China because the cost of shipping across the Pacific was now too high. Not all consequences are negative.
If they started drilling today, it would still be a few months before the oil flowed and prices were affected. But since everyone would be able to know it was coming, much of the effort going into alternatives would dissipate.
We need to find the alternatives as soon as possible. It is likely that there will always be a need for oil for one purpose or another and we will one day be glad we still have oil available to us.
Certainly alternatives need to be found. One of the things Michio Kaku points out in The Physics of the Impossible is that if a civilization is to be successful, out-living even its own home planet, they will eventually need to find a way to make use of close to 100% of the energy the sun provides that planet.
It’s mind boggling how much energy is poured upon the earth freely every day by the sun, but so little is done to make use of it.
…
Still, yes, drilling in America would take several months for it to affect prices, but there would still be people who are pressing for alternatives, and they’d be able to do so without the voices of those who are sick of $4.00 fuel in their ears.
Agree!!! It’s ridiculous that we are protecting an area (ANWR) that sees less than 1500 visitors a year and thereby holding an entire nation hostage to middle east oil.
It has never occurred to me that we protect ANWR for the benefit of visitors. I thought we protected it (and a few other places) simply for the virtue of its existence. That there are at least a few places on the globe that have not been directly fouled by mankind’s activities seems worthwhile to me.
Visitors simply make the job of protection harder.
“there would still be people who are pressing for alternatives,”
Yes. There have been people pressing for alternatives for decades, but it is only when energy prices are high that they get any real traction (read $$ invested). Lots of creative ideas received funding in the seventies, but as soon as energy prices went back down, all of that progress stopped.
Right now everyone wants alternatives. But if the price of gas goes down, the sale of SUVs will jump in a hurry.
There was an article in the paper yesterday (or so) that discussed how some manufacturers are bringing jobs back to the US that they had sent to China because the cost of shipping across the Pacific was now too high. Not all consequences are negative.