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SayWatt
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Post subject: Conservation is solution to energy crunch
 Posted: Jun 25, 2008 - 01:50 AM CST
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Remedies for soaring gasoline prices proposed by President Bush and Sen. John McCain would increase America's capacity to produce more energy from its own resources. What those remedies would not do is reduce the cost of gasoline anytime soon.
The president's demand that Congress immediately lift its bans on exploring for oil and natural gas off-shore and on federal lands wouldn't be productive for at least seven years, more likely 10. The impact on world prices, and on the cost of a gallon of gas in America, would be minimal. That's because the U.S. controls, at most, only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves.
In a political year, the president, the Republican candidate and the Republican congressional minority are trying to leverage the American people's disgruntlement with gasoline prices that have increased six-fold in recent years. Their aim is to overcome environmental restrictions imposed in response to public demand nearly 30 years ago and give their staunchest supporters, the oil companies, what they have been lusting for.
Nowhere in the Bush or McCain proposals is there so much as a hint that all of the added oil and gas would be retained exclusively for American consumption, which presently accounts for one-quarter of the world's production. That's because it wouldn't. Instead America's mammoth oil companies would continue to seek the highest returns, meaning the growing markets in Asia especially.
The 200-mile offshore exploration requires the use of drill ships outfitted with the gear to exploit oil fields located deep under the ocean. The makers of these ships are furiously building, but the world competition for their product is severe. That adds to the time lag between finding a field and exploiting it commercially.
If, in the fullness of time, the exploration of off-limits fields were all to come on line and be as productive as their most ardent boosters predict, their impact would be diluted by yearly population increases and the accompanying rise in demand for gasoline and natural gas. The proposals put forward by Bush and McCain last week could at best help in the far future, but only a bit.
For his part, McCain came out in another speech for the building of 45 nuclear power plants in the U.S. by 2030, and another 55 some unspecified time down the road. At present, the 104 nuclear reactors still on line produce about 20 percent of the country's electricity. Bush also routinely invokes nuclear power as an energy shortage antidote.
Their reasoning is why not step up nuclear's role because it does not add to global warming as fossil fuels do.
What McCain did not discuss was the practicality of doing so. The federal government over the years has dedicated billions of dollars in subsidies to the nuclear industry. But that would be chicken feed to what it would cost to erect new plants today. It could well be so much that any gains would be overtaken by their costs. Besides, McCain has no plan to add to nuclear subsidies, pretty much undermining his supposedly bold idea.
Neither did he speak to the abiding issue of how to dispose of the increased nuclear waste that is a byproduct of nuclear power. His campaign said he would find a way, not otherwise spelled out.
I wish he would let us in on what he has mind to safeguard the people against toxic radioactivity that requires at least 10,000 years to dissipate as a threat to health. No one currently in the neighborhood of any nuclear waste holding tanks -- and especially not the citizens of Nevada, where the Yucca Mountain depository is located -- should be indifferent to this drawback of nuclear power.
For example, in 1987 the U.S. government agreed to begin cleaning up nuclear waste at New York state's West Valley Nuclear Service Center. A report issued recently by the state Department of Environmental Conservation stated: "Exactly 21 years later, it has yet to reach the first regulatory milepost" at the facility that had been shut down since 1975.
The U.S. hasn't found the money or the will to cope with the toxic messes created a generation ago, so how is it prepared to underwrite a major expansion?
Dealing with the challenge of the energy crisis requires more than political tomfoolery that the Republican president and the Republican candidate have so far mustered. The solution rests in the nearer future much more on government-supported energy conservation. On their own, Americans are beginning to drive less. They should be enabled to do so in more efficient vehicles and encouraged to otherwise modify the profligate ways energy is consumed in this country. That actually would bring costs down.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/3 ... ine25.html |
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