Hey! Lots of good uniting attitudes in here. Cool! Faos, you'll have a great nation when about 95% of your scientists leave. We have to get along and get something done. I actually like Clinton's remarks, for once. Anyone against reducing our dependence on foreign oil? How about reducing our dependence on oil period? Anyone against that? (Other than our vice president, that is). Bush could build very wide bipartisan support if he put his money in alternative energy sources.
If people want to leave the country because of the election, that is their choice. Not begging them to stay doesn't make us out as trying to not unite the country. As far as oil is concerned, thats's a waste of money and effort. The minute you invest in alternative energy sources, OPEC drops the prices and the market gets flooded with cheap oil prices. Experiment over. Trust me, we already tried it.
(1) Faos said "one down," which is a far cry from "not begging them to stay." I assume that's obvious. (2) I want to trust you, and I know we've given half-hearted tries. The oil lobby is arguably the strongest lobby in the US, and having watched funding alottments in research for the last 15 years, I can say we haven't tried anything other than oil with much vigor. I don't know of anyone reputable who thinks we'll have any oil in, say 2200. It's not going to last forever, and as it gets increasingly scarce, we'll have to get in more and more wars to get our few drops. That's not the thread's topic. Sorry. But you answered my question: yes, there are people who will not get behind reducing our dependence on oil.
95%? Were you the same guy taking the exit polling numbers? Btw, I already consider this a great nation.
Why should the government allocoate funds to this? We already have a very favorable climate for investment in alternative energy sources in the private sector. Why do you think investment by the public sector will magically produce something that the BILLIONS being invested by BP, Exxon, ChevronTexaco, etc has not produced? The government is not the answer to every problem, B-Bob. If you are talking about tax incentives and the like, they already exist. What do you propose B-Bob?
"favorable climate" I have to give your subconscious credit, T_J, for another howler, this time for global warming. I sense extreme sensitivity in you when the topic turns to oil. If I understand your main point, it is that industry spends plenty of R&D money already and the government shouldn't bother. That's not what gave us semiconductor innovation (from university physics labs when semiconductors were considered a useless curiosity) and the laser (originally no useful purpose imagined). We need this level of breakthrough in energy thinking. I know countless scientists in research labs of all stripes. The top scientists do not gravitate to industry. On average, the most creative scientists, (and the ones who see their work as a true passion, rather than a punch-clock job), are working at universities and government-run labs. Yes, there are exceptions, but even if we say the top minds somehow migrated to oil company research labs, you would have to fundamentally change the research culture there if you want radical innovation. Absolutely fundamental research is needed for breakthroughs, not R&D work with one constant eye to the bottom line and another to the near horizon. If you don't want the government to seriously fund alternative energy research, then you must be willing to make wholesale changes in industrial R&D. That's not impossible, but I haven't seen much encouraging effort. American industries seem to be more focused than ever on near term profits (hence, given increasingly slack government enforcement of responsibility, our ongoing environmental catastrophes). Obsession with quarterly stock performance is the antithesis of motivation for an important paradigm shift. So, what do we see in our nation at present in terms of energy? When the country drastically cuts money for, say, basic nuclear fusion research (multiple administrations guilty of this), then continues to support some of the lowest national emission standards for industry and automobiles on the planet, and then moves to start oil exploration in hundreds of thousands of acres of previously protected land you cannot say the country is prioritizing a new energy paradigm. Well, you can say it. You and Master Rove can even use Orwellian terms like "clear skies" or what have you. But you cannot say it in any honest and intelligent sense of discussion. What you can say honestly is that the nation's energy policy boils down to a myopic pursuit of oil profit with war as one of a dwindling number of options for maintaining supply lines. ... And, with respect to the thread, ... boy that Moore guy is fat, isn't he? Whoa.
He's probably proposing something along the lines of much stricter regulations, making it illegal for big corporations, especially big oil companies to line politicians pockets, etc. If you think that the big oil companies today are incentivized to speed up the process of creating sustainable, cheap alternative energy sources, you are dead wrong. It is in their interest to try and keep up with changes in technologies, but they are not leading the technology change and are barely on the bandwagon.
