If your family was having trouble making ends meet, what would be the first thing you’d do to balance your budget? Maybe reign in credit card spending, cut back on nights out, and start carpooling to soccer games? If your family was having trouble making ends meet, what would be the first thing you’d do to balance your budget? Maybe reign in credit card spending, cut back on nights out, and start carpooling to soccer games?
But Jim Gilmore and President Bush would have some much different advice for our fictional family. Would you consider a second mortgage?
James S. Gilmore III has made drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the East Coast, including Virginia, a central focus of his campaign, casting it as the only plausible solution for reducing the price of gas.
"I think the number one challenge for the national security as well as the pocketbooks of regular men and women out there is this challenge we are facing with gas prices," Gilmore, also a former governor, said in a speech this week. "If we are going to increase the supply of oil, then we've got to drill for oil in the United States."
As America faces tightening fuel supplies, Jim Gilmore and President Bush are choosing to champion the same policies that have driven gas prices above four dollars a gallon in the first place. Thinking we can drill our way out of our addiction to oil is like believing you can borrow your way out of debt. It's policies like this that have driven gas prices up an astounding 250 percent since the start of the Bush administration.
Mark Warner's reaction seems to be (and I'm paraphrasing here): Just bring it. He tells the Washington Post, "I hope this becomes one of the defining issues of this Senate race." Watch Warner detail his plan to create jobs and strengthen America's energy security here.
Most OPEC nations have generations of petroleum reserves in supply, however, with $100+ oil spurring demand for alternatives amid a growing political atmosphere for independency and climate, OPEC and especially the Saudis may soon be sitting on generations worth of a resourced substantially reduced in value as a niche commodity.
Frightening for them, good for us, someday I hope.
But then they'd probably say that there were untapped reserves in Yellowstone Park or underneath the Rockies.
Actually, they have said that.
One thing for certain is, any expansion in the worldwide economy will further tighten excess oil capacity over consumption levels, spurring more traders to hedge against runaway prices, sooner rather than later. The current trend of high oil prices as we have now, may abate or level off, but once consumption resumes from expansion, it may certainly return.
Before the US can reach the apex of fossil dependency before its decline is a reality, their must be some relinquishing that new fossil has to enter the markets from somewhere, in order to keep the economy stable which so timely investments can fund the energy revolution.
One thing not mentioned, as the clean energy future moves closer and closer, eventually there may be less future pressure towards higher oil, if the forecast is truly pointing towards a clean energy future. At that moment, the prices may fall drastically because the Saudi's may realize their wealth in the ground, many not be as valuable as they once believed. It would be horrific it OPEC disagreed and tightened supplies in order to stave off the clean energy revolution.
http://www.roanoke.com/politic...
Jim "Fiscal Destruction" Gilmore, on the other plan, would like tod drill drill, drill, and drill. And I really don't think he is kidding: