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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (185452)	3/24/2004 7:48:08 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575176

re: We already know how to produce alternative fuels. We just need oil to go up to $40 to $60 per barrel to make the alternatives cost effective. You make it sound like flipping a switch to alternate fuels. Currently we use 19.6 million barrels a day, 25% of the worlds production. There are certain uses that are fixed; as far as I know you can't make plastics without petroleum. Many uses are discretionary; cars can run on electricity, a portion of home and business electricity can be generated by solar; electricity can be generated by coal of nuclear power. But the discretionary uses are not a short term project; they will take several decades to implement. Right NOW we are in a situation where we have to expend huge political, economic and human resources to secure oil supply. Oil that most experts believe will continue to get more precious. Some believe that the major oil producing countries are overstating their reserves by as much as 100% (for obvious reasons). In addition, we are at the beginning of what looks like a long term geopolitical, maybe even religious, struggle which happens to center in the very area that produces about 50% of our oil consumed. That adds a significant risk factor to our oil supply. A sharp decrease in oil production from the Arab producing countries would skyrocket prices and put us into an immediate recession or worse. It's fine to believe in free markets. But if you blithely maximize todays profits with todays reality, without looking toward the future, you are sacrificing the future for the present. You don't build infrasture based on a one year payback; you measure the payback over the usable life considering the future price of alternatives. And with 25% of the worlds oil consumption, with a demand/supply crisis on the horizon, and with geopolitical risk, it's only healthy to begin implementing solutions that will take a generation to complete. John