Michael Rass

Michael Rass

Michael Rass is the web producer for The World.

  • |
  • ALL POSTS

How would you overcome America’s dependency on foreign oil?

June 9, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

President Obama has called for the U.S. to become energy independent, saying its reliance on foreign oil and global warming posed threats. Outlining his energy priorities, he said the country would not be held “hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes, and a warming planet”.

Discussion

15 comments for “How would you overcome America’s dependency on foreign oil?”

  • urbanenomad

    Every home in the US should be required to have solar panels. The gov. needs to require electric companies to allow these solar panels to feed back excess electricity back to the grid and should pay home owners for providing the excess electricity. This will give home owners incentive to buy solar panels and as more solar panels are purchased the cost of solar panels will go down and the competition of selling solar panels will give an incentive to make better and more efficient solar panels. Small entrepreneurial companies should be allowed to build solar panel farms to any land or building that is owned by them or rented to them of which they can plug into the electric grid and be paid by electric companies. Hopefully as more solar panels are put up the electric company should look into selling solar panel services to home owners and should develop a new business model in the new energy environment. The gov. should mandate that electric company to not rely on old technology and should push forward on renewable energy sources.

    To reduce oil dependencies for the car market, car companies should have a mandate to have at least one fully electric vehicle for sale in their product line within the next 5 years. There should be tax incentives for people to purchase electric cars as well as allowing electric cars to go on HOV lanes nation wide.

  • eurosport

    Start by riding a bicycle to do all your local errands – change begins with one person – you might actually feel better and lose weight in the process. If everyone in the country did this then Exxon/Mobil would not be posting a 14 BILLION dollar profit for the 3rd Quarter of the year.

  • desiderata

    Agressively implement the Pickens Plan. Use windpower (generated in the center of the USA and solar power (generated in the sunny SW of the USA) transmitted throughout the country via a new robust smart grid) instead of natural gas in our nation’s power generation system. Use domestic natural gas to power our vehicles while we perfect technology to provide us with better alternatives, e.g. hydrogen or fully electric. (This means all our cars and trucks will have to built new or retrofitted to use this fuel and refueling stations will have to be installed everywhere.) Mandate from the federal level that all levels of government immediately encourage “cottage power” generation and provide adequate incentives for property owners to participate in this ultimate decentralization of power production. (We only have to look back to World War II for a precedent in the “victory gardens” that helped feed a nation in spite of enormous diversion of food stocks to feed our troups.) These steps will immediately create millions of jobs, income and massive revitalization of our economy.

  • gulliver001

    I would first rename new energy sources as “secure energy” because our legacy energy sources at this point in history destablize our economy, promote conflict and severely impact our water supply, air quality, food supply and climate.

    Subsidies for oil must end, tax loopholes closed and use of the military in acquiring oil must be greatly reduced and paid for directly in the cost of oil. Direct and substantial assistance to coal producing towns and cities would have to become a priority as these people are faced with hazzardous work and are in a position where their very livelyhood is destroying their own land. But there is no such thing as clean coal in production or use and it must be phased out.

    Institute an economic stimulus package for 2009 that focuses almost entirely on re-building our electrical grid so that it can more readily accept and store energy produced from private gererators, businesses and consumers – this will allow for an untold array of sources and truely spark invention. Subsidize mass installation of power generating and conserving devices such as solar, wind etc. at businesses first and then homes.

    Mass transit and resource conservation are far more useful targets than electric cars. The auto industry needs to be refactored into new lines of business not subsidized to increase production of marginally better vehicles that promote poor city planning and excess consumption.

    It is important to put into place plans that are not subject to the ebb and flow of current energy prices. We are forced to pay for this change with money borrowed from China and paid for by future generations. Much money currently going to developing offensive weapons with little value in our current world can be diverted to developing truely secure energy.

    • EricX

      I agree – we need to do something about reducing our use of oil and find alternative sources of income for those that mine coal.

      If we spent half the money on developing secure energy sources that we spend on weapons, we would be much safer.

      How ever on the point of mass transit – even the most efficiently run systems in high density cities back east, only take in about 1/3 the operating cost thru fares. The rest is paid with general tax revenues. While in the more dispersed populations of the west and south mass transit is a pipe dream that will NEVER be a realistic alternative to the car.

      We Americans will not do the right thing anymore then we will quit making babies or vote out the entire congress.

      As Casey Jones puts it “cheap energy in the opiate we all are addicted to”.

      The real problem is one, no one will talk about – population control.
      There is not enough resources on the planet to give everyone on it now an American life style !!!

  • Eric Weidanz

    I would have the government build a very large solar and wind plants. Using the same type of program used for dams. Use part of the power replace all current electric production. Use the rest to convert CO2 to gasoline (look it up, multiple patents).

    They could use the electricity and the gasoline to pay back to project. They could store the gasoline to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

  • holdenoversoul

    We, as in all 300M of us, can overcome our dependence on foreign oil the same way you eat an elephant: one bite at a time. People snickered when Obama suggested we fully inflate our tires. As a member of the 50+ mpg club, when the temperature drops and lowers the pressure in my tires, my miles per gallon drops by about 5mpg or 10%. There are several things (bio fuels, better engineered cars, drive at 55mph, etc.) that individually account for only a small savings (5-10%) but cumulatively would save 25-50% of a barrel of oil. It’ll take every American, each attentively doing our part; we got ourselves into this mess, only we can get ourselves out.

  • casey jones

    haveing spent a large part of the last 30 years, in the trucking business, (over half of it in the oil industry) i beleive that the real issues about dependence on forieghn oil have been glossed over by just about every body, except the people who’s livelyhood depends upon the price of a barrel of oil. The untold truth of the matter is that we have enough oil in this country to last us for a while. the cost of produceing that oil has made it non competitive in the scope of a world economy. i have worked on oil feield locations where we were putting a steel lined hole in the ground that was 5 miles deep. the cost of putting an oil well on line is so high, (when you have to do it responsibly). that it’s nearly impossible to compete with a foriegn source that has considerably lower production costs. we could survive with our present consuption habits on domestic crude alone, but the price turns out to be enough to put the country on it’s knees. which is what we’re paying for now. the oil industry has pretty much been sitting on it’s hands since the early 80′s when the last oil boom ended, and we all lost our jobs. the problem was that oil could be imported from abroud cheaper than it could be produced here, which was good for the economy (cheap gas and deisel prices) but a calamity for people that relyed on oil and gas production for a paycheck. i bought a home in oil feild country for $3000.00, after all the jobs left. The real reason that we went to was in the middle east was because the only way to raise the price of a barrel of oil to a profitable level, was to eliminate a part of your competition. unfortunatly it has put the world economy in a shambles
    we have been spoiled by cheap energy for eons, and the real answer to energy independance is to quit useing so much of it. watching the way we ship products around the country, the traffic on the roads that consist of one person per car, the fact that we need to light up our environment with flood lights and neon. we are the problem, and cheap energy has been the opiate that has fueled our present dilemia, and not being able to afford to do it anymore is the only thing that will cure the addiction.

  • http://thebillionaires.org Paul Berolzheimer

    I am vegetarian and have been for over 30 years. Becoming vegetarian or at least reducing meat consumtion is one of the biggest things an individual can do to reduce their energy use & carbon footprint, meat production uses huge amounts of energy compared to vegetarian sources of nutrition.
    I also work at home much of the time, avoid driving during heavy traffic periods, drive small, fuel efficient cars, and only use the air conditioning in my house during the hottest parts of the hottest days. I am planning to install solar panels on my house as soon as my finances will allow it.

  • Chuck Bucks

    Link the 1040 IRS forms with local property tax databases and implement a progressive tax on the number od square feet each person occupies: <750 square feet (sf) per person (pp)= no tax
    750-1000 sfpp = $2 per sf (above 500) each year
    1000-1250 sfpp = $4 per sf (above previous level) each year
    …
    2000-3000 sfpp = $10 per sf (above previous level) each year
    and continue exponentially

    Take all the funds and invest in solar, wind, geothermal, fuel cells, and in decommissioning nuclear plants (unless we figure out what to do with the low level and high level radioactive waste).

  • Julie in Alaska

    I am not really sure it can be done. We should be working a lot harder to get along with the oil producing nations. The idea that we can be fully independent is probably folly and will lead us in the wrong direction.

    • EricX

      Julie –
      That is what got us in to the mess we are in now.
      OPEC cares about us as much as Exxon cares if you can heat your home in the winter – TFS !

      Worse then that many of those countries would like nothing more than to see the USA eat mud at their feet for a change. Alot of them don’t even give their own people justice, what would make you think they would give a rats behind about you ??

      Wake-up – for OPEC and Exxon et al – IT”S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY !!!!

  • Michael Cook

    First of all, the next several winters will probably be an epiphany moment for many Americans, as they come to understand that the degree to which carbon dioxide has been allegedly overheating the planet has been fantastically over-blown.

    In fact, it is entirely proper to wonder if the world is not about to enter into another Little Ice Age (based on the fact that the planet has been slightly trending cooler the last eleven years.) In this event, the propaganda war against fossil fuels will be counter-productive to the goal of most humans to survive the coming ice age.

    Well, the proof is in the pudding. Every news release I have seen from the Eco-Leftist-Green propaganda machine this summer has been from NOAA or NASA concerning very narrowly defined issues that only they can detect or monitor. They don’t talk about any evidence open to general viweing, such as whether glaciers are advancing or retreating, or the Arctic summer ice meltback, or what temperatures have actually been in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere the historical records are really spotty and debatable, rather along the lines of how really cold it has been in Antarctica since 1950, given that there were only a very few measuring stations.

  • casey

    to be honest i think that becomeing energy idependent will be good altough i dont know if its going to happen.

    Pual to be honest, you arent really helping by being a vegatarian, you are actually hurting the people by eating things that put oxygen and other good things into the air. im not saying that i hate you for it but your reason for being a vegatarian is kind of stupid. People who eat meat are helping by eating things that poop and put bad molecules into the air and casue polution

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Graham/1167593570 Michael Graham

    There is plenty of new technology available that will allow us to increase the output we get from our current oil and natural gas reserves.  With standard technologies, the output from a well is only about 50% leaving half of the oil or natural gas left behind. 
    The technology exists, however, to increase this output by 20% or more using clean, closed-loop systems that have beneficial byproducts.  Check out the Trigen technology currently being developed by Maersk oil, Siemens, and Clean Energy Systems: http://www.maerskoil.com/Technology/trigen/Pages/TrigenTechnology.aspx