Why gas prices suck?

Question

Why gas prices suck?

Answer 1

Because our country refuses to be energy-independent.

Many modern nations are completely independent of all other nations when it comes to their energy.  They do it by building power-plants, building new oil refineries or expanding their drilling operations.

But not our country.  Our politicians want to keep us safe from all that, and so instead of making our own energy we rely on middle-eastern countries to drill and refine oil for us.  The down-side is that they can charge us whatever we want and we'll still have to pay it.

There are some things we COULD be doing to become more independent, though like:

1) Start drilling in Alaska.  The state of Alaska is huge, and we'd only be drilling in a tiny fraction of it.  I'm about as Liberal as it gets, but I'd rather mess up 1% of Alaska then not be able to afford to drive (or take the bus, or subway or whatever) to work.

2) Our country hasn't built a new oil refinery in decades.  All the other countries are doing it.  Why aren't we?  Because our law-makers are worried about pollution.  Well I've got news for you, whether they're polluting in Saudia Arabia or Pennsylvania, it's still hurting the Earth just as much.  In fact, American companies are even more advanced, and would produce less pollution than they're making in the Middle East.  The only difference is that we're forcing Arabs to pollute their own countries so we don't have to pollute ours.  Good job, America.

3) We need to look in to nuclear power.  Everyone is like, "we can't build a nuclear power plant, it will explode like the cheap, understaffed power plant in Chernoble."  Okay first of all, no one says we have to build a power plant near a city, town, village or any other inhabited place.  We have endless miles of deserts where we 'test' nuclear bombs all the time.  Why not put the plants out there?