US Offshore Oil Drilling - McCain v. Obama

[kenlee]

The issues surrounding recent discussions on US offshore drilling for oil has significant impact for all Americans. The soring oil prices are effecting the costs of everything from food to gas. There are also significant issues on local and global environmental impact. While there are many issues, we need to look at our next leader and determine which will have the best course of action going forward. Here's where your vote and voice can count.

Watch the two video clips and submit your vote.

Also, leave a comment if there is more you wish to say or an issue you think should be raised within the context of this clash.

 

[pocketfullofshells]

ummm those where not courses of action in the video

McCain....its Pristine and should be protected, but we need oil...and I dont want to tell the states what to do, but we can bribe them more and get them to....

Not really a policy

Obama....a simple statement of fact, not a policy. Drilling will not do anything today only down the road. People want something now, while we should look at 10 years down the line, people want it now.

And again its not a policy, its a statement of fact.

try to find video with real policy, or something real about the issue if you want votes.

 

[Sihouette]

The solutions to the energy crises aren't as hard as BigOil is making them out to be.

They want it to seem hard, expensive and impractical to maintain their price-fixing record-profit making hold on the market of energy consumption. It's the biggest industry in America after all and they're just being good capitalists..

The solutions are simple:

1. Increase all forms of acceptable and safe (not nuclear>they use this as a scare-tactic to herd people back to oil) technology at-site. In other words if the city in question is located next to thermal vents, you use geothermal. If the city sits in the desert, you use solar. If the city is Chicago, you use wind..and so on. If the city is near a natural water fall/flow you use hydro. Each city has an energy authority and centralizes a power grid to serve its citizens who either pay a premium or are taxed to support the energy production. In most cases costs should be quite low since most alternative types of energy cost most to setup and very little to maintain and keep running.

2. Maximize efficiency in the types of things that still need fossil fuels...until hydrogen car technology stops being suppressed by BigOil, we make laws that no passenger car is allowed to get under 40 mpg. Give tax breaks and subsidies to people who carpool or use mass transit. Keep the prices of gas high for commuters but low for shippers/trucking/farming companies and other vital suppliers of goods to keep food and merchandise prices low, spurring the vitality of the economy. For farmers who utilize alternatives to petrol products like using wind or sun, hydro or geothermal to power their farms and who employ organic methods that eliminate or greatly reduce petroleum based peticides and herbicides..more subsidies and tax breaks. In other words we give people incentives to conserve while still keeping our economy rolling and productive.

3. Give tax incentives to BigOil to join up with #1 and #2, or else.. Pass legislation forcing BigOil to carve a fraction of their megaprofits to fund development of alternative energy production sites all over the nation, giving them shares in exchange in the companies themselves but never allowing them to gain dominant shareholding, keeping the maximum at say, 30%. Pass laws that make preference of more polluting and/or dangerous and/or non-efficient madatorily subjegated to more clean, safe and efficient ones. We can pass "energy efficiency, cleanliness and safety" acts that protect citizens from being manipulated into a war in Iraq and held hostage by one superprovider like BigOil forever.

*******

It will take more than candidate promises. McCain cannot be trusted to enact the foregoing and I predict that even if he espouses it in his speeches, he knows where his bread is buttered from and his ties to BigOil cannot be trusted.

Obama may snatch this and run with it, but BigOil will join with McCain and BigMedia to defeat him by spreading a thousand different "scientific and trusted sources" as to why it won't work and he's being foolish and will manipulate the public into believing (perhaps rightfully) that Obama's inexperience and naivitee can not be relied on to lead us properly away from our energy crises. National security issues will be woven in and used to manipulate public sentiments pro-BigOil/McCain.

Let's face it, BigOil verily owns DC. When Obama is lame-ducked, assuming he even makes it past BigMedia's gauntlet this Fall, he will not be able to enact a thumbnail of what he intends to.

I know of one democratic candidate with the moxy to pull if off though..

Her last name rhymes with "WIN-ton".

 

[Sihouette]

And one of the most important details of all would be the above plan's ability to spur the economy by creating thousands of new jobs in each locale surrounding the construction, development, implementation and maintainence of our new, clean, safe, localized and efficient power plants.

Talk about your win-win.

Now stay tuned for BigOil to tell us why it won't work. Be prepared for lots of Poo-pooing, ridicule and "scientific studies" (funded by BigOil) cited to tell us how absurd this idea is.

My POV and the POV of millions of disgusted patriotic americans is that one monopoly (BigOil) has been so grossly neglegent and manipulative of public information with the intent to keep us fossil-fuel dependant, even to the point of jeopardizing our economy (our national security) and putting us to war to get more more more OIL, that it's time they pay for this irresponsibility. I'm not saying try them for treason; although some people have ranted about that. I'm saying it's time to put the big bully in a time-out and force him to play nice. Anyone else who acted as they have would be tarred, feathered and strung up by their necktie. I'm just saying they should repair their damage and restore our economy. Seems fair.

 

[Sihouette]

I'd think the best way to handle the situation would be to send a team around the States, using known data and gathering more to do feasibility studies on which alternative power source would be more site appropriate. From there a design could be drawn up and proposal for funding for each site submitted. There's jobs right there without a nail hammered.

Commencement of construction...jobs jobs jobs. Implementation...more jobs...Maintenance and repair...still more jobs.

There may be something to this..

 

[Sihouette]

I saw two anchors on BigMedia today commenting on how americans are pushing harder and harder and HARDER for alternative energy.

IMMEDIATELY following their chant they both declared, almost in unison, "I am for nuclear! Me too!!" And they were to follow their spout with a bit on the safety of a nuclear plant.

They know how many people are opposed to terrifying outfalls of nuclear reactors melting down and also the radioactive waste from these abominations of mankind. Their sole reason for promoting nuclear in response to our pushing for alternatives is to scare us right back to Oil...BigOil...their main sugardaddies...

They know any attempt to build a nuclear facility in someone's back yard would be met with epic protest numbers, and for good reason. BigMedia's "anything but sensible alternatives" mantra is orchestrated, as it has always been by this mouthpiece for BigOil, as silly and not supported by reasonable people.

And when it starts really looking like people are going to riot over alternatives, all they have to do is loudly announce the "sensible alternative to oil...nuclear" and a quiet pall overcomes the restless crowd.

Is there no shame they won't stoop to? I doubt it.

 

[Sihouette]

What happens when one industry has a monopoly on a product, on most major media outlets and "owns" many of the politicians in a governing body?

You have the USA!

That industry? BigOil. If you're bothered by being owned by BigOil policies that include.

1. Suppression of even discussions being aired about viable implementation of safe alternative energy resources (that don't include nuclear)

2. Packing Congress with lobbying money and influences.

3. Hostile corporate takeovers of other countries, using public funds and military equipment and lives in order to hold onto their monopoly until the last drop runs out before impelementing sane alternatives.

Then you should be writing your representatives and urging them to forget the pocket-padding offers coming daily to them in Congress, to consider and vote on this matter sanely so that they can get re-elected next time.

Time to restore the country to who it belongs. Us.

 

[Libsmasher]

What happens when one industry has a monopoly on a product, on most major media outlets and "owns" many of the politicians in a governing body?

You have the USA!

That industry? BigOil. If you're bothered by being owned by BigOil policies that include.

1. Suppression of even discussions being aired about viable implementation of safe alternative energy resources (that don't include nuclear)

2. Packing Congress with lobbying money and influences.

3. Hostile corporate takeovers of other countries, using public funds and military equipment and lives in order to hold onto their monopoly until the last drop runs out before impelementing sane alternatives.

Then you should be writing your representatives and urging them to forget the pocket-padding offers coming daily to them in Congress, to consider and vote on this matter sanely so that they can get re-elected next time.

Time to restore the country to who it belongs. Us.

This is preposterous - the oil industry doesn't have a monopoly on oil - you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Sihouette]

BigOil has a monopoly on our nation period. It has us by the shortest of shorthairs: our energy usage. They have strategically knocked back talk, discussion, research and development of energy alternatives since the 1960s. My own father got anonymous threatening phone calls in the 1970s for trying to patent a cogeneration system that would've saved billions of barrels of oil usage by now.

This type of thing has been going on unbeknownst to John and Jane Q. Public for years...

The reason BigOil doesn't want to do the sane thing, to switch its powerholdings over to more sane, reliable, sustainable, safe and clean energy sources is that they are just that, reliable. Do you know how hard it is to price-fix and maintain a monopoly of world-record profiteering when the technology commodity your dealing with is reachable for backyard energy producers?

Let's face it, drilling for, shipping, refining and distributing gasoline from crude is a highly techical way of energy production. They cannot have Billy Bob putting a hydro-generator in his creek out back and then approaching the City Council of Anywhere USA to show them how easy it could be done in Big Water Creek on the outskirts of town!

We've been held hostage by BigOil for decades now. Face it. It is preposterous to think anything else.

And forget the nukes scare-tactics. We're not buying that either. Iceland and other progressive countries have some lessons to teach us; and it's time to pay attention.

 

[Sihouette]

Weird...in spite of knowledge that radiation is harmful or even lethal to the human body, all I can find on nuclear energy on the net seems to be pro-nuclear propaganda and how radiation that might leak from an accident is something none of us should be concerned about..

But even with that I found an article that reluctantly discusses the "Homer Simpson Factor"...the human error factor:

Nuclear plant personnel procedures protect from internal threats. All nuclear power plants have programs that protect against the potential threat that plant personnel may be, or may aid, terrorists. New employees and contractor employees must pass stringent background checks regarding employment, education, and criminal histories as well as drug and alcohol screening tests and psychological evaluations. Anyone appearing to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or exhibiting erratic behavior, will be immediately removed from the work area for evaluation. In addition, the NRC requires energy companies to conduct random drug and alcohol tests of at least 50 percent of all employees annually. Nuclear plant employees are also subject to continual behavioral observation programs by trained supervisors and are provided counseling for job-related issues or unusual behavior.Source: http://www.uic.com.au/nip14app.htm

Of course the thing is that if they wave nuclear energy in front of our noses, we'll gladly hop back into the oil/coal "solutions" to global warming...not.

I was looking at their list of energy-related accidents and overwhelmingly, coal mining ranks highest..with methane explosions listed one right after another.

I note with satisfaction that Faux news anchor Bill O'Smiley finally had the brass ho-hos to name BigOil as the culprit behind our nation's economic crises and how they are stonewalling alternative energy.

Kudos to you Mr. O'Smiley. With all those pro-oil industry ads with the sultry blonde walking along asking people if they knew they owned oil companies from mutual fund investments to nauseating pitches that the oil-industry cares...blah blah blah...you can't have gotten any favorable treatment from your overlords there at Faux.

Here's to anchors with grit and courage. Maybe if this trend continues at Faux, they'll make it off our list of which BigMedia outlets to boycott at the end of the 2008 election season.

 

[Bunz]

Oil is a wierd issue for me, considering I dont line up with either candidate on thier views.
Also, obviously, my home state is a major oil producer
I generally like where Silhouette is leaning. But it is to sharp. The transition off of oil that America needs to make should be a more gradual and inward progression. Even if tomorrow, there become a viable generally affordable electric or hydrogen powered cars, the demand for oil in America would still be more than we produce. I think there are a few things that need to happen as we transition to other things for energy which even at its best rate wouldnt happen in America in 50 years. We need oil for a hell of a lot of things besides burning it.

I say while providing the measured efforts and incentives we develop targeted and specific areas where it is economically viable and enviromentally sound.

We need to make way for the Trans Alaska NatGas Line, open the small coastal area for development in the ANWR region. Also, further exploration in the Chukchi Sea offshore area(although I have a few key questions that the oil companies have never been able to successfully answer, dealing with a spill in ice conditions)

The infrastructure is in place. It will at least in some ways reduce our dependence on foreign oil from countries who are not really our friends. While making the transition over a marked period of 20-30 years, and in some uses 50 years.

 

[Sihouette]

No, we need to make rapid progress towards alternatives. We need to make up for lost time that BigOil has suppressed for four decades. In the last two years I've seen the low tide water line on my local beach go from about 200 feet away from the bluffs to 50 feet away from the bluffs. At high tide the waves lap and eat away at the bluffs' base, a thing we've only seen happen in the last 30 years during the worst of storm surges at a freak high tide. Now it's happening during calm seas in average high tide.

Global warming is happening. To take a slow approach to reverse this will have consequences beyond any of our imaginations. That is to say that even our best scientists cannot predict how dire the circumstances will be. No, this isn't going to be a party where people in the Yukon can enjoy Carribean-like temperatures...it will be floods, fires, famine and total chaos.

Fossil fuels like coal and oil are unacceptable, but the top preference of the BigOil monopoly holders. The reason is simple: they're hard to get ahold of and refine for use for energy...so the prices can be manipulated without people questioning it. Clean, easy and safe site-specific alternatives are reliable and their production nuances are minimal...so price fixing cannot happen like BigOil is used to. Therefore they are "silly" alternatives and we need to move "slowly" towards them. Translation: we'll give them lip service right now but when the hubbub dies down we will go back to business as usual: keeping their development subdued.

I am not the first person leaning in this direction. Scores of scientists have been PLEADING with pocket-padded elected officials for decades to switch over to alternatives that European countries have had in place since the 1960s. And no, I'm not talking about nuclear...the nuclear issue is one that is not clean nor safe and the Homer Simpson syndrome is real and viable. All it takes is one idiot and we're doomed. And lord knows that idiots are a dime a dozen..

We need

1. Public regulation of BigOil. Don't whine to me about socialism. We drive around on socialist roads, are protected by a socialist military and raise our kids in socialist schools. Some socialism in a capitalistic society is like checks and balances. And our little friend BigOil has gotten WAAAAAAYYYY too big for it's britches..

2. We need to tap BigOil profits in exchange for limited shares in new alternative site-appropriate alternate-energy producers. This is the money that will quickly develop site-appropriate alternatives to the sea level eating away at my bluffs..

3. We need to enact legislation that never allows any one source of energy to ever again place our country in such a state of economic and strategic vulnerability....to coerce and lie to us to rob our public funds to finance their corporate takeover of other sovereign nations..

4. Some have pushed for punative measures against BigOil, but they are vastily too powerful.

Oh and one more...

5. We need to ignore their propaganda ads of the sultry blond and family-oriented calming messages telling us that more oil drilling is the answer..

No. We need to send them a message that "business as usual" is no longer tolerated by the United States governement...remember us? The People??

 

[Andy]

The solutions to the energy crises aren't as hard as BigOil is making them out to be.

Show me one example where BigOil has made it out to be hard.

They want it to seem hard, expensive and impractical to maintain their price-fixing record-profit making hold on the market of energy consumption.

Normally it's the alternative energy source suppliers that make it hard, expensive, and impractical.

1. Increase all forms of acceptable and safe (not nuclear>they use this as a scare-tactic to herd people back to oil) technology at-site. In other words if the city in question is located next to thermal vents, you use geothermal. If the city sits in the desert, you use solar. If the city is Chicago, you use wind..and so on. If the city is near a natural water fall/flow you use hydro. Each city has an energy authority and centralizes a power grid to serve its citizens who either pay a premium or are taxed to support the energy production. In most cases costs should be quite low since most alternative types of energy cost most to setup and very little to maintain and keep running.

They are already doing this. Clearly it is expensive, and clearly it's not working. Try again.

2. Maximize efficiency in the types of things that still need fossil fuels...until hydrogen car technology stops being suppressed by BigOil, we make laws that no passenger car is allowed to get under 40 mpg. Give tax breaks and subsidies to people who carpool or use mass transit. Keep the prices of gas high for commuters but low for shippers/trucking/farming companies and other vital suppliers of goods to keep food and merchandise prices low, spurring the vitality of the economy. For farmers who utilize alternatives to petrol products like using wind or sun, hydro or geothermal to power their farms and who employ organic methods that eliminate or greatly reduce petroleum based peticides and herbicides..more subsidies and tax breaks. In other words we give people incentives to conserve while still keeping our economy rolling and productive.

The previous CAFE standards didn't help. A new one will not either. Tax breaks will not help other than to form a two tier tax system the rewards the rich, and punishes the poor. Hydrogen cars are not suppressed by the oil industry, they are supported by the oil industry, showing how little you know about anything you speak about here.

3. Give tax incentives to BigOil to join up with #1 and #2, or else.. Pass legislation forcing BigOil to carve a fraction of their megaprofits to fund development of alternative energy production sites all over the nation, giving them shares in exchange in the companies themselves but never allowing them to gain dominant shareholding, keeping the maximum at say, 30%. Pass laws that make preference of more polluting and/or dangerous and/or non-efficient madatorily subjegated to more clean, safe and efficient ones. We can pass "energy efficiency, cleanliness and safety" acts that protect citizens from being manipulated into a war in Iraq and held hostage by one superprovider like BigOil forever.

The job of an oil company is to produce oil. That's it. They should use their profits to do what their company does, namely produce oil. Taxing them, or forcing them to provide funding for things which will not help, is unconstitutional and counter productive to the problem.

It will take more than candidate promises. McCain cannot be trusted to enact the foregoing and I predict that even if he espouses it in his speeches, he knows where his bread is buttered from and his ties to BigOil cannot be trusted.

As opposed to Al Bore's ties to Big Oil? What BigOil ties does McCain have exactly?

Obama may snatch this and run with it, but BigOil will join with McCain and BigMedia to defeat him by spreading a thousand different "scientific and trusted sources" as to why it won't work and he's being foolish and will manipulate the public into believing (perhaps rightfully) that Obama's inexperience and naivitee can not be relied on to lead us properly away from our energy crises. National security issues will be woven in and used to manipulate public sentiments pro-BigOil/McCain.

You haven't had a scientific backing to anything you've said yet. Pot calling the kettle black? Granted you might be an expert on inexperience and "naivitee", as you say.

Let's face it, BigOil verily owns DC.

Which is why DC has completely thwarted the oil industry for the last 40 some years, which caused the price hikes we are paying. What a stupid idiotic comment.

 

[Andy]

And one of the most important details of all would be the above plan's ability to spur the economy by creating thousands of new jobs in each locale surrounding the construction, development, implementation and maintainence of our new, clean, safe, localized and efficient power plants.

You can't spur the economy with new jobs that cost the economy billions with higher energy prices. It doesn't work.

Second, you are going to support a Big(whatever), no matter which position you choose. It's either big solar, big windpower, Big Geo power, Big whatever. So basically you are a corporate hack, calling everyone else corporate hacks.

Third, Wind power can not replace a single source of energy. It never could, it never will. So you'll have to have a coal power plant, or oil power plant, or nuclear power plant, somewhere, with as much capacity as needed, to cover every stupid windmill you put up.

We covered Geo before. It's limited and just as expensive as nuclear. It will not be the dominate power generation in the US ever.

Solar is still an economic nightmare for the time being.

Now stay tuned for BigOil to tell us why it won't work. Be prepared for lots of Poo-pooing, ridicule and "scientific studies" (funded by BigOil) cited to tell us how absurd this idea is.

Your idea is absurd because it's absurd. No one needs to say the obvious unless they are talking to know-nothings on a forum somewhere. BigOil does not give a rats *** about any of your alternative energys because none of them deals with the market that oil services.

If geoplants popped up all over Ohio, I'd still fill up the ol Buick at the Speedway station. If wind mills dotted the whole state of North Carolina, they'd still fuel the American Airlines jets with oil based kerosene. If there were solar panels on every roof for 200 miles, they'd still use oil to make the plastic covered computer case you are using right now.

Why in the world you think BigOil is out to get you is beyond me. But your theories are ignorant as one can get without being brain damaged.

My POV and the POV of millions of disgusted patriotic americans is that one monopoly (BigOil) has been so grossly neglegent and manipulative of public information with the intent to keep us fossil-fuel dependant, even to the point of jeopardizing our economy (our national security) and putting us to war to get more more more OIL, that it's time they pay for this irresponsibility. I'm not saying try them for treason; although some people have ranted about that. I'm saying it's time to put the big bully in a time-out and force him to play nice. Anyone else who acted as they have would be tarred, feathered and strung up by their necktie. I'm just saying they should repair their damage and restore our economy. Seems fair.

Really... so the advent of Ethanol, Bio-mass and electric cars that are popping up everywhere... is all part of BigOil's grand conspiracy to keep us oil dependent? How exactly, has BigOil done this? What exactly... and I want specifics, have they done to cause all this?

So it was Big oil, the forced us to vote complete fools into congress, that then passed completely stupid laws that prevented 'bigoil' from drilling, which forced us to import the oil? So really, the attempt by BigGovernment to castrate our oil industry, was planned by the oil industry.... does anyone here think?

If I could just find one liberal that remotely sounded intelligent when they talk, I'd be shocked.

 

[Andy]

I'd think the best way to handle the situation would be to send a team around the States, using known data and gathering more to do feasibility studies on which alternative power source would be more site appropriate. From there a design could be drawn up and proposal for funding for each site submitted. There's jobs right there without a nail hammered.

Commencement of construction...jobs jobs jobs. Implementation...more jobs...Maintenance and repair...still more jobs.

There may be something to this..

Let's have teams of people going around checking for potential locations for cheap conventional energy sources like say... oil. It won't cost billions to start, given the companies that deal with such a commodity already exist. No one will have to buy a new car, or pay high taxes to fund it either.

Construction on the wells, jobs jobs jobs. Implementation, more jobs. Maintenance and repair, more jobs.

Better still the infrastructure and distribution network already exists, so no expensive inefficient government program, costing us billions and driving up the national debt will be needed.

Best of all, unlike any other plan detailed thus far, this will reduce our need for imported oil, by increasing our domestic production!

Talk about a 3-way win situation, this is perfect!