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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (106123)	7/18/2003 11:45:45 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If we had developed those technologies, we could lease them to other nations (hefty profits there!), and nobody would need ME oil. Its not a case of not having the technology and then we research it and it is a magic bullet solving our energy problems. The technology largely already exists its just too expensive to deploy right now. The price will probably go down eventually (at least the "real price" after adjustment for inflation) but not primarily due to new research but rather do to the practical skills, knowledge and infrastructure that would be gained from actually rolling it out to meet an actual market demand for the product. Our military budget is now $400B/year, and much of that is so we can project power into the ME. If we didn't have to worry about importing oil we probably wouldn't shrink our military by more then $50 bil. or at most $100 bil. per year. Oil independence would cost more then that, in fact more then the entire defense budget, esp. if you wanted it quickly. Add in all the externalized costs (= costs shifted onto the taxpayer) for imported oil (and nuclear), and two technologies are already competitive: wind and Alberta oil sands. Not really. They are not competitive, esp. wind as a general energy solution. It works to supply some of the energy demand in some places but it is at most only a very tiny part of the energy picture. The reason we don't have Energy Independence, is that we haven't made it a priority We haven't "made it a priority" because we have a free market economy rather then a socialist economy where things like this are decided by national "priorities" or "plans" whether or not they make economic sense. Tim