Dan Minette schreef:
> >California pioneered automobile emissions standards and I believe still has
> >the strictest laws on the books.
>
> Those are good things, but they do lower gas mileage, thus increasing the
> energy used per mile.
The idea of emission standards is to decrease the energy used per mile. Less
energy used also means less emission. Or at least that is the idea behind the
concept of emission standards here in Europe.
>
> >California has the fourth highest oil
> > production (year to date) (3), but we will never, never, never besmirch
> >the Big Sur Coast with oil rigs an the inevitable mess they cause.
>
> Where is the documentation of the inevitable mess? The documentation I've
> seen is one group of employees predicting a mess if careful steps aren't
> taken. While I certainly would want oversight, that doesn't mean that oil
> platform = big mess is a given. You know its impossible to prove a
> negative. The track record of US and North Sea offshore drilling is good.
> As far as I can tell, most oil spills here have been due to regular
> non-tanker, non oil well spills.
>
> Let me ask a question. Is it even possible for oil well drillers to do a
> good enough job to satisfy you? Will there be any way for them to meet your
> standards?
> >We have high gas taxes, but I think that a 250% tax would be a little
> >silly.
>
> Why, that's how Europe promotes conservation. I don't get it. You seem to
> be arguing for cheap, abundant, energy that people will be careful to use as
> little of as possible. I proposed taxing it as a means of conservation, and
> you call it silly.
Hold your horses here buddy. That is not entirely true. Taxes are used
selectively as are subsidies to encourage the use of less environmentally
polluting energy and to get people to use non peak hours for energy consuming
things. A lot of households already get their 'green' energy and/or have dual
metering systems where the night time current is a lot cheaper. And with our
current technology it is easy to take advantage of this, using the timers
integrated into nearly all energy consuming modern electronic household
equipment. It does work rather well. Consumer pays less, surplusses of night
time current are reduced and peak usage is down. Also people are interested in
wind/water energy.
In Eindhoven they are now experimenting with solar boilars on a large scale.
They wanne be the first 'sun' city in the Netherlands. From what I've heard it
works. So if you ask me taxes and subsidies aren't all that bad if it means our
air becomes cleaner and we don't have to eat radioactive veggies. Unfortunatly
this only works if the rest of the world joins in, since pollution won't stop at
borders. By the looks of it.... Ah well got to start somewhere. Best to start at
home.
> Oh, about .10/Kwh. But, remember, a lot of my electricity is produced in a
> nuclear plant, so costs are relatively low.
In the short or in the long run? There are children who die of cancer because
they were exposed to radiation while they were still in the womb. Research
concluded that there is no safe amount of exposure for the unborn child. Even
the slightest form of radiation in the womb can cause severe cancer later on in
life. So I hope you have 'nough sites to store the shit that results from using
nuclear power and there are no accidents in future. Somewhat utopian if you ask
me.
> I'm arguing that one has to assume that the is something special about the
> US that gives us the right to use production elsewhere but prohibit it in
> our own country. Using it because its cheap elsewhere is one thing;
> prohibiting it is another.
Reading this last statement of yours and hoping I understood it correctly, do
you mind if I jump in here on a sidetrack. Your are rather vehemently defending
the good practice of US oil drilling. Well I believe you. But as I see it, there
is a little problem with having such high standards. They usually cost a lot of
money to uphold. Even more so if production volume isn't all that high. So at
the end of the day isn't it cheaper to get the oil from where standards are much
lower and production rates are higher. That way you can still wave your track
record and claim that the oil industry in the US is clean. No spill in the US
but unfortunatly there are still large amounts of oil released into the
environment. Nigeria (in a connection to Shell) comes to mind and wasn't there a
rather large spill in Siberia (Badly repaired pipelines I believe caused it)
last year or was it the year before? So Alaska would probably be safe for a
while (even with drilling going on there) but still, investing in changing to
other types of energy seems to make more sense to me in the long run. Even if
that means changing consumer behaviour through subsidation and taxation.
Sonja
