Oil cost stokes push for policy (Congress starts OIL Conservation Bill)

[cthrumatrix]

Oil cost stokes push for policy

Congress begins work Tuesday on a bill to boost production and conservation.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – For a generation Americans have commuted, heated their homes, manufactured goods, and expanded foreign trade without any major overhaul of energy policy.
Proponents of oil exploration and conservation never went away, but their urgings were muffled by an era of relatively cheap oil.


With crude oil topping $55 a barrel and 55 Republicans in the US Senate - up from 50 before the November elections - major energy legislation now appears much more likely to pass than it did even a year ago.

Monday oil traded briefly above a new high of $58 a barrel. Prospects ranging from terrorist attacks on critical oil facilities in the Middle East to soaring prices at US gas pumps this summer have rattled Wall Street and are giving new urgency to efforts backed by President Bush and key lawmakers.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0405/p01s01-usec.html

IF they didn't they all would be voted out in 2006...come to think of it...they STILL should be voted out for ignoring Peak Oil for the past 30 years............ awful energy planning.

[cyberpj]

1. The Long Emergency begins

The Long Emergency
By James Howard Kunstler
Current issue - Rolling Stone Magazine

What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?

Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

(snip...)
Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

It will change everything about how we live.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7203633

[wallwriter]

5. This is certainly true but

someone should circulate an author who is less fast and loose with the facts than Kunstler.

[chlamor]

2. Let's watch this unfold

Nuclear economy presented as hydrogen fix is something to watch out for.

Remember the Military runs this country and they won't be advocating solar powered battleships.

[Al-CIAda]

3. "I want an energy policy that encourages consumption"- Bu$h -nt

[cthrumatrix]

4. oil measures will come out with ZERO pre-discussion not ALARM the sheep

[durablend]

6. It PUNISHES the RICH so there's no way it'll pass...

(puke): "There's NO WAY the gubermint is gonna do anything to take away my GOD GIVEN RIGHT to drive a Hummer and keep my house at 90 degrees in the winter"

[cthrumatrix]

7. there have been many behind the scenes meetings for these

changes....watch the admin come out and make these recommendations...when they should have been doing this DAY 1 !!!!!

[BeFree]

8. Our Governors

It is the most proper when those who we elect to represent us look to the future, and throwing aside all personal interests, come to a real and proper understanding of where the country is headed.

Alas, the Republicans having controlled the government for these past decades has failed to put aside it's personal interests and in so doing has neglected the country's well being.

We shall now pay for that neglect by virtue of the fact that the oil our country is energized by will now be rationed out to only those who can least afford the limited diet. That means most of our citizens.

It could have been so different... we could all be driving efficient cars, we could all be living in efficient houses and a new age transportation system would, by now, have the finishing touches being applied.

It behooves us to replace those representatives who have failed us, with new people.

[cthrumatrix]

9. if ONLY the TV media would discuss these FACTS

[lanlady]

10. and this from the same people...

...who want to eliminate railroad subsidies and think public transportation = communism?

[cthrumatrix]

11. but but but...they only had 30 years to see this day coming