janelane wrote:

ibenez wrote:

We'll, I went a little overboard I guess. I blame environmentalists (tree-huggers). We should have nuclear power, which would reduce our need for oil, except for automobiles.

We should have nuclear power in every state, and it's the environmentalists who lobby against that - it just so happens than they are all also democrats.

-sigh- You (and every other ill-informed consumer) simply don't know what you're talking about. At least you admit that nuclear will do nothing to assuage the oil problem. Nothing but reduced consumption is the answer. And, even then, we will be re-inventing energy sources forever because their efficiency losses will always be exploitable for another joule of energy.

See my previous post for the numbers.

-janelane, Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering double-masters student at Georgia Tech

It's not that simple on either side. We cannot simply abandon fossil fuel based energy sources since the entire world's economy is built off of them. Nuclear is not really a viable stepping stone to future technologies due to the scarcity of fuel that janelane mentioned. Even still, there are PLENTY of viable alternatives that just need to be deployed more and pricing will stabilize, while technology does the rest.

A sensible energy policy would have this country going on a ramp starting today to gradually replace fossil fuels with sustainable sources such as solar, hydro, and wind - say over 20 years - to 60% of our energy needs. In 20 years, you'll easily have brought down the cost of these types of systems to be ubiquitous, and other technologies such as fuel cells and photovoltaics will have come along nicely thanks to that investment. You'll probably always need coal, natural gas, and oil for a small subsection of uses for at least another 100 years. But for God's sake, don't sit idly by and pretend that now is not the time to act! It was the time to act in 1975!

If anything, this current 'crisis' is probably the best thing to happen to us. I've been saying for 15 years that if the US had to pay for gas like the Europeans did, we would've had sustainable energy platforms a decade ago. Now that it's starting to drag on the economy in a major way, and it's hitting Joe Sixpack in the wallet on a daily basis, it's time to put the spotlight on the issue. It's not Iraq. It's not terrorism. It's not Katrina. It's our shortsighted, profit motivated culture that's doing this to ourselves. That has nothing to do with treehuggers or republicans or anything. It's going to be survival mode for everyone if we don't make the change NOW!

RE: Atlanta may run out of gas.