Mc Cain and Clinton’s gas tax proposal: A sensible short-term solution or a response to media hype?
Congress voted yesterday to funnel the 70,000 barrels of oil per day usually kept in reserve directly to gas pumps through the rest of the year as a short-term solution to sky-high prices, while Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton proposed a fuel tax holiday for Americans this summer. How could the energy situation worsen, should government take drastic action and what are the real solutions? “Gusher of Lies” author Robert Bryce expounds on other God and man-made events that could spike gas prices even more, such as a hurricane damaging the Louisiana Offshore Operating Pipeline (LOOP) which receives oil from foreign tankers or a coup in Venezuela.
Yet, Jim Hackett, scientist and CEO of Anadarko Petroleum, says that oil is only a piece of the energy puzzle and warns against government actions to prevent an energy crisis, such as a universal limit on CO2 consumption, while counter intuitively advocating letting the forces of supply and demand work their magic.
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What are the short-term and long-term solutions?
A short-term solution for liquid transportation fuels, according to Hampshire College Professor Michael Klare, is cellulosic ethanol, derived from corn stocks, woodchips and other biomass (not food crops like corn) and requires serious investment to expand from laboratories to a commercial scale. In the long term, solar power is the answer.
Though finding the next big oil well sounds like the solution to all our energy ills, it won’t keep the lights on, says Jim Hackett, scientist and CEO of Anadarko Petroleum. What’s needed is a “multi-element complex model of various energy sources with a huge infrastructure in place” like the combustion engine which has fueled society for over 100 years.
Nuclear and solar power are important, but the key breakthrough is super-capacity batteries, says “Gusher of Lies” author Robert Bryce. Thomas Edison spent $30 million (in today’s dollars) over a decade to improve battery technology but couldn’t get the energy density to power a car or truck - how close are we now?
