Why don't Liberals want us to drill for oil?

Question

Why do liberals oppose drilling for oil? What's so bad about it? There are plenty of places to drill, instead of other countries. We could just use our own country! We have plenty of places, like the gulf of mexico, and even Montana!! Look at where oil drilling would get us. We'd have lower gas prices, a better economy, lower prices for commodities, and a happy community. But look at where the liberal mindset would get us. We have the risk of losing our oil when other countries decide to cut off our supply, we have high prices for commodities, and out of this world gas prices. Plus, people obsess over going green, (which annoys me like c**p) and they think that corn is going to solve our problem. Corn ruins crops for years, where after you harvest it, you can't plant anything. And, it takes up space. So basically, their plan sucks. But why do they want it? Our plan for life is reasonable and well, kind of obvious! Why don't libs see that???

Answer 1

I've never heard that about corn crops.  Where we live, people plant corn in the same fields year after year.  They rotate them with fallow fields, but they continue to use them.  

As a liberal, I'd say that we want to find other options for energy.  It's time everyone took responsibility for the planet.

Answer 2

Because fossil fuels are going to s***w us in the long-run, and ethanol is only a temporary solution at that. If you were more educated in alternative fuels you'd know we could be using resources like geothermal power (Iceland produces all of its power this way and actually exports power to Europe; every state west of North Dakota-Texas except for Colorado has significant geothermal reserves), old classics like solar and wind (which need to have more development to be as useful as say, geothermal), or even engines that run off water or beer production waste.

Answer 3

I am an economist and you are wrong.  There are several reasons for not tapping all US resources.  The biggest one is that the US has passed peak oil in the late 1960's.  That means the US has been producing less and less oil year in and year out.  If we upped our output we would just run out of domestic oil quicker.  We will never, even if we tapped all sources at the same time, get back to the level of production we were at in the 1960s.

That leads to another problem. We could up our oil output somewhat and it would lead to a short term fix, but then we would find ourselves 100% dependent on foreign oil much quicker.  A decision was made in the 1970's to place legal obstacles in the way, for a variety of reasons, the biggest was national security, to prevent complete drilling.  The US decided it didn't want to be the first nation to run out, it wanted to be the last nation to run out.

Ethanol was not a plan of environmentalists but of the big agriculture concerns.  It was a payoff to the farm community.  It has been opposed by much of the environmental lobby because it is actually more polluting.  It turns out that the waste products combine with sunlight in large cities, when you have concentrated amounts of gas, and produce even worse pollution than if it did not exist.  There were statutory modifications a year or so ago to address this problem, but I do not know where that stands.

The ultimate irony of all this is that Brazil is oil independent and we could nearly be that way, but the political blocks in Congress are amazing to protect both farmers and domestic petroleum firms.  If the market were to decide on its own, without Congress' meddling to protect firms like ADM, Ford and Exxon, we would have long ago moved toward energy independence.  It is poor judgment in Congress that has caused this, especially in the last decade.

I happen to have a cousin who is a former senior geologist at Shell.  None of what is going on is a surprise to the oil companies, and if congressmen and women were honest, or to congress.  No one broadcasts that tomorrow will be bad if it is not in their political self interest to do so.  So the American public has been fighting for higher prices for years in Congress because they didn't know they consequences of their choices.  It wasn't that no one knew.  I knew about this price path for years because I spent quite some time with my retired cousin about a decade ago.

The exact way it came out has been a surprise, but the outcome itself has not been a surprise.  I hate to say this but comments like the one you are making are as much propaganda as those spouting off environmental nonsense.  I have had a running fight with a professor in another field over coal plants.  There is a lobby that would love to end coal fired power plants.  The problem is that the economic data shows that when things of that nature have been tried in the past, the result has been higher pollution and higher costs.  What gets lost in the mix are the unintended side effects and the inability to control behavior across borders.

Drilling in Alaska, for example, would only temporarily reduce the price of oil and would increase it even more in the long run.  It is not a good idea, neither is reducing gas taxes.

Prices are determined by the most flexible party.  If you can choose an alternative to oil then you are the marginal purchaser.  It is the marginal buyer who decides the price.  If you are addicted to cocaine you get no say in the price.  If you are iffy about buying cocaine, then the price is adjusted such that you get the most profitable level of new users.  America is addicted so it gets no say in the price.  India and China are just becoming addicted.  These two countries more than any other are determining what price they can or cannot handle.  America really gets no say, or at least not much.  For America to regain a say in the price, Congress would have to dump an enormous amount of money into alternative energy so that Americans could behave in a flexible manner.

Answer 4

it started because of tree frogs, spotted owls etc. but now has shifted to their view as any profitable business being the enemy. as soon as wind or solar become profotable they will all oppose the big wind and big solar companies as they have with big oill.

the ******** notion is that if a company make a big profit it is because thay are taking your money. when it comes to businesses making money they see sucess as failure and failure as success. profit has become a dirty word.

Answer 5

I would not lay all of the blame entirely on any one political outlook or other-the fact is that it is a short term cure.More far sighted individuals could make a much better argument that we have not begun to explore alternative sources nearly as much as it would be in our own best interest to.The current crisis is largely due to the indecision of all parties involved and the lack of opportunities that we are now,finally presented with.

Answer 6

As I understand it one of the big reasons people in general (not just liberals) don't want to exploit homeland resources is because of the negative impact it would have on the environment. The other is that if we start using up those resources now, they won't be there 50 years from now when we really need them.

The other thing to consider is that just because exxon or what have you taps oil reserves in Alaska or elsewhere, doesn't mean they'll just decide to lower their prices. The price of oil per barrel is based on many factors. Where the oil comes from is just one. Believe it or not, about half the oil America gets actually comes from Canada.

Keep in mind major oil conglomerates like OPEC are about profits. Lowering prices doesn't get higher profits. Think of this way. You live in a town and own a gas station thats 100 miles away from any other gas station. You're the only person people can get gas from. So whats to stop you from gauging the market and making all the money in the world through high priced gas?

OPEC is like that. It is the main supplier of oil to our country. And they are royally bending us over and f***ing us too. Really its not just us its other countries they supply oil to.

One realistic way we might at least stablize the price of oil is if we buy it unrefined and refine it ourselves. Then we'd have extra jobs and cheaper oil. At least as I understand it thats what countries like the UK do. And keep in mind European countries are paying the equavilent of 8 dollars per liter. We're paying about half that per gallon.

By the way two things Colorado does have is wind and sun (it is the mile high state after all). I know because thats where I live.

Answer 7

because they want the price of gas to go up it's like blood diamonds they mine a ton of diamonds , but they don't release a lot into they public therfore keeping the price up ,also from 1859-now we have used 1 trillion barrel of oil and modern oil pumps only pump out 1/3 of the oil. also oil can be processed out of coal and oil shale scientist estimate we have 1-3 trillion barrels left so the reason gas is up is becuase the govement wants more money for iraq. it's complicated.