Why Real Patriots Hate the Environment: It's time to wake up people (hahaha, what a hilariously overused, quaint phrase. Thanks Palin)! Global warming is a myth, it's largely disputed in the scientific community, it's a conspiracy run by the Emerald Cities, CCX, Al Gore, AND OBAMA! It's actually caused by a shift in the gravitational poles of the earth as prophesied by the late great EDGAR CAYCE! (Nobody's saying that, I'm just fascinated by Cayce) Oil drilling is perfectly safe, we're not actually causing ocean temperatures to rise, we're not in the middle of a mass-extinction event, and don't need to start doing everything in a more sustainable manner...
WHEN in the history of EVER was there an ANTI-environment campaign on the scale that conservatives are running today!?! This is ludicrous! Who's spreading this garbage? (that'll likely be my next post :P) Oh well, that's never going to convince anybody, so how about this: Reducing oil consumption is a matter of economic and national security! Two terms that speak clearly to all conservatives :D
Junk Stolen From Ch3 of "Free Market": The emergence of state-capitalism (read the book!) has brought about the rise of National Oil Companies (NOC)! How big are they? NOC's control 52% of the present market and 88% of all known reserves. They ARE the future! Aside from NOC's being vastly larger than private sector oil companies, they also have different motivations. Private industries are concerned with profit, whereas the NOC's use their natural resources as bargaining chips to achieve the political goals of the nation.
What does this mean for the future? As the present wells run dry and our dependence on oil grows with our population, we become vulnerable to the political whims of those controlling the NOC's. For example, Venezuela has repeatedly threatened to cut off our oil supply, and they're our third largest supplier! Oil prices are going to go up as the supply goes down, and then who gets rich, and what do you suppose they'll do with their new found wealth? Well when oil prices peaked back in 2008 Russia started a conflict with Georgia, and Iran started firing off test missiles. Also, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, China gets oil for weapons in Iran, and traded oil for nuclear programs in N. Korea! THAT is the trading power of oil. Forget dollars!
So which NOC's are the most powerful, and who owns them? Saudi Aramco, Russia's Gazprom, China's CNPC, Iran's NOC, Brasil's Petrobras, Malaysia's Petronas, and Venezuela's PDVSA make up the "new seven sisters" of oil. We have good relations with Saudi Arabia, bad relations with Iran and Venezuela, we have very shaky relations with Russia and China, and Malaysia and Brasil largely keep politics out of their oil (not to be feared or relied too heavily upon).
So which NOC's are the most powerful, and who owns them? Saudi Aramco, Russia's Gazprom, China's CNPC, Iran's NOC, Brasil's Petrobras, Malaysia's Petronas, and Venezuela's PDVSA make up the "new seven sisters" of oil. We have good relations with Saudi Arabia, bad relations with Iran and Venezuela, we have very shaky relations with Russia and China, and Malaysia and Brasil largely keep politics out of their oil (not to be feared or relied too heavily upon).
Our massive reliance on oil will necessarily fund nations who would love to see us fall! Despite claims to the contrary, we're NOT a socialist state, and because we love our free market so much, we will NOT be able to get in on this NOC game. Our only chip on the table is that we are and must continue to be vital to the survival of all other economies through our top notch educational institutions, innovative products, and massive consumption (...of things that don't rhyme with soil). The ONLY way to take control of our destiny is to reduce the bargaining power of oil by massively reducing our dependence on oil for energy, production, and gasoline.
One glimmer of hope resides in the fact that these NOC's are not operated as well as private multi-nationals and largely use the profits for political gain rather than for investing in new rigs and fixes. This hurts their productivity, but also limits the supply further by blocking access to other companies who could more efficiently extract the oil. This could help or hurt, depending on who is failing and who picks up the slack.
Short Term Junk: Cap and Trade will necessarily cause electric bills to "skyrocket," but if oil goes over $100/barrel again or even $200/barrel, what do you think is going to happen to our bills? Byproducts of cap and trade include cleaning our environment, developing green technologies, and Al Gore gets rich. Byproducts of continuing our reliance are we destroy the environment, lose our position as a global super power, and start speaking Chinese.
One glimmer of hope resides in the fact that these NOC's are not operated as well as private multi-nationals and largely use the profits for political gain rather than for investing in new rigs and fixes. This hurts their productivity, but also limits the supply further by blocking access to other companies who could more efficiently extract the oil. This could help or hurt, depending on who is failing and who picks up the slack.
Short Term Junk: Cap and Trade will necessarily cause electric bills to "skyrocket," but if oil goes over $100/barrel again or even $200/barrel, what do you think is going to happen to our bills? Byproducts of cap and trade include cleaning our environment, developing green technologies, and Al Gore gets rich. Byproducts of continuing our reliance are we destroy the environment, lose our position as a global super power, and start speaking Chinese.
Case rested. Conservatives, please, stop with the kill the planet campaign. Archaic Libertarian greed at the moment will cause our downfall in the future, a flaw I'll likely write about soon.
~Yasu
...btw, I gave oil drilling a hard time earlier, and would like to clarify. Just because there's a disaster now doesn't mean drilling won't be a good idea once we resolve safety issues. If the anti-oil stigma is similar to the anti-nuclear stigma following Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, it will only exacerbate the problems I just outlined. It's not a popular opinion right now, but I hope and believe oil drilling should make a comeback much faster than nuclear did :\
