Give a cheer, Congress is here!
Posted on September 9th, 2008 at 11:06 am by East of EdenCongress is back in session. I know you feel as excited about this as I do, no really, I know you do. The question is what will those crazy kids do for the three weeks of hard work on behalf of he American public, they’ve scheduled for themselves? The possibilities are limitless!
Apparently, they’ve been striking some deals so work can get done. (I’ll let you vote on defense if you let me talk about energy policy!) In the end the defense bills always pass, it’s a no brainier, so in my mind this is not really a good deal. The esteemed leaders of our nation cannot be see to abandon the military, especially when there are elections to be won and power to be maintained.
The real question will be if they can make any progress at all on energy policy, specifically off shore drilling and increasing domestic supply of oil and petroleum products. I love the earth, and yes this housewife reduces, reuses and recycles as much as she can. However, I love my car, and I love it when I don’t have to mortgage the farm to fill it up. It never ceases to amaze, and confound me that we are not using the resources we have in this country to meet our needs. It infuriates me that the oil and gas companies have been painted the villains for wanting to be able to run their businesses. After all, isn’t the business of America, business?
In my dream world, Congress would have a real debate on drilling. They would remove the chains that bind this country to foreign powers, and let domestic drilling and refining work and be done. At the same time, I’d like to see nuclear power plants (yes in my back yard!), wind farms, tide farms, clean coal, and American innovation be given a chance to work in the market to solve the energy crisis and make our nation a safer and more secure place to live. Somehow, I think this dream will end up in the land of the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny –nice to think about, but only real on a greeting card, and that Congress will find something to distract itself with, and leave the American public, once again, high and dry.
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I love our camaraderie on oil and gas (among many other things). My sentiments exactly.
Seriously, wake up Congress and smell the high gas prices and vast untapped oil and energy supplies.
And you know, the western state where you live Kristen, has some of the largest reserves of shale oil in the country….the largest!! Think of how much energy, how many jobs, what economic stability it would provide if we could use our own resources.
Word.
Don’t forget the natural gas too.
I think natural gas is a good option, and the United States has a lot of it. I think shale oil is a mistake, the economic and environmental trade offs to harvesting shale oil are prohibitive in my opinion.
When did the GOP House members leave DC??? They stayed most of the time, no media coverage.
Probably would have gone to the Convention.
Drill everywhere, all options, solar, win, nuclear avaible. Im tired of paying 4+ a gallon
They didn’t leave, but for all of their good intentions, not much got done. Nothing really ever gets done.
Congress is back in town? Watch your wallet!
I still volunteer Nevada as a wonderful place to develop more energy oriented facilities - nuclear plants, refineries, etc. After all that’s already been done to the place the past century, there’s nothing much worse left to do. Plus, it’s very well located to take care of the Pacific and mountain west.
There is a Solar Energy plant in Boulder City, NV and at one time I had thought they would open a massive solar plant at the Nevada Test Site.
Still would rather not build another Nuclear plant. Yucca Mountain is NOT the place to store that waste.
My valley is a good source for wind power.
Pelosi’s whole argument of off shore drilling being bad for the environment is a ridiculous.
There hasn’t been an off shore drilling oil spill in over 40 years since the incident off the coast of Santa Barbara. In the last 40 years, think of all the hurricanes (including Katrina and more recently Gustav) that have pummeled the off shore drilling rigs. Yet there was no spillage.
Furthermore, Russia and Cuba are horizontally drilling off the outer continental shelf. They’re stealing our oil and laughing about it because the morons in Congress won’t lift the ban!
THe other point is that oil seeps up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico on it’s own anyway, why not try and get as much out as we can, while we can?
Also, the whole ‘drilliing is bad for the environment’ is such a crock….it’s in the oil companies best interests to be good stewards of their environments, if they are not, they destroy the resources they are trying to get at. What it boils down to is this, the environmental lobby is not concerened about the earth, they are just another special interest trying for a bite at the apple, and to get and maintain power. If they can obstruct the exploration, or developement of energy, they have power over the process.