Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Off The Oil Nipple

In an interview with Bloomberg TV's "Money and Politics" last night, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., explained Democrats don't want to increase supplies of oil and gasoline because they want to wean Americans off of petroleum products.

Senator "no more oil for you" Maria Cantwell, D- Wash.

Asked point-blank if Democrats in the Senate would consider how increasing the supply of oil would lower the prices that are pinching U.S. consumers, Cantwell replied:
Oh, we definitely want to move beyond petroleum. And so there will be a supply side offered by the Democrats and it will include everything from battery technology to making sure that we have good home domestic supply, and looking, as I said about moving faster on those kind of things like wind and solar that can help us with our high cost of natural gas.
Has the Senator given any thought over to the fact that it will take many years and trillions of dollars to convert from oil to anything else? For example:

What will it take for Americans to convert to battery operated vehicles?

We will need to replace millions of gasoline powered cars with electric cars that presently don't exist - except for a few hybrid samples - cars that will cost many thousands of dollars each. That means you will have to scrap the cars you now own... literally scrap, since they will be outlawed from our highways. That, or park it in your back yard and watch it rust away. Has the Senator considered the huge cost of replacement? And the financial loss we will all face when our present cars are outlawed? What if you still owe 20 or 30 thousand dollars on your nice gasoline powered car when it's outlawed by this bunch of flakes? It won't be worth a tinker's damn.

Charging up all those electric car batteries up will take THREE TIMES AS MANY power plants as we have today, and since this Senator and her buddies won't let us use oil, those plants will need to be run on coal or nuclear. Some say that these new plants can be run on natural gas. Consider the pipeline system that will be required to get that natural gas to all those new plants. Thousands and thousands of miles of huge new pipelines.

Regardless of their fuel source, those new plants will cost billions and take years to build, and consider the fact that nobody wants one built in their back yards. Plant placement will involve years of litigation and delay. Has the Senator considered the cost - and time line - on those new power plants?

Maybe we can all have solar panels installed on our roofs? You bet. The cost of such a system - panels, converters, power storage, installation - places it completely out of reach for the average car driving home owner... more than the cost of your present average(not California) home.

Delivering all that additional power to those millions of electric cars will require a power grid that can handle three times the present load. Today's national power gird would simply overload and collapse. New power lines across the nation - three times more capable than the ones today - will take years to build and many more billions of dollars. Do you suppose the Senator considered any of this before she opened up her deep green mouth?

So... this wide-eyed, Pollyannish Senator and her good buddies refuse to allow for more oil supplies to be delivered to us to keep us afloat while we design, build and distribute a new transportation system that that will eventually replace the gasoline powered car.

And that's just for automobiles, folks. How about the rest of our economy, our plants, factories, businesses, farms, etc., that today depend on oil to operate and survive?

Good grief. Let's dump these fools this coming election cycle and replace them with people who use their heads for something other than a hat rack.

We will eventually "move beyond petroleum", but it will take years, and until we do, we need oil to keep our economy and our nation on the move.

Right now, we need all the oil we can get our hands on, but this myopic Senator and her gaggle of beltline cohorts would rather watch us strangle to death on foreign oil than allow one new oil well in America.

Toss 'em out... all of them.

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