America's leaders need some leading, and that's got to come from you and your neighbors directly.
While there is no magic bullet to lower gas prices overnight, we can make changes now that break the cycle of oil addiction and that put our nation on a long-term path to energy independence and security. The goal is to produce more energy here in the US from all sources, create jobs while growing the new clean tech industry, save money by being more energy efficient, and give Big Oil some real free market competition. Select a topic below to learn more.
It's absolutely true we're going to be driving cars and needing oil for many years to come. And it's always better to get as much here at home as possible. At the same time, the US sipmly does not have enough oil under our ground and under our waters to meet our future energy needs. We are a great country with great resources and talent to develop other cheap, abundant, and homegrown energies here at home. Even with the special privileges and taxpayer subsidies that Big Oil gets, for example, private investment in clean technologies grew 30% from 2010 to 2011. So let's not turn out backs on ourselves ... and ignore Big Oil's silly argument that the clean energy industry is some big government project.
Maybe the oil companies wouldn't have so much control over us if they had some competition from other fuels like natural gas and biofuels or from more fuel efficient cars on the road. If we have choices, Big Oil won't have so much control over our lives. Conservative oil man Charles Koch admitted in The Wall Street Journal in March: "Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay. Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market."
Oil & coal are the biggest welfare queens around. With record prices and record profits, why in the world do they need it? Former Shell CEO John Hofmeister let the cat out of the bag in February, "with high oil prices such subsidies are not necessary." President George W. Bush has said that with prices as high as they are now, "we don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives." While Big Oil's subsidies are adding to our already staggering federal deficit, subsidies and special privileges have not increased domestic oil production. In fact, the US produces about the same amount of oil now that we produced in the 1950s. The $20 billion in subsidy money we would save over five years could cut our deficit, pay the salary of 91,000 teachers, cover the Medicare benefits of more than 88,000 Americans, or help drive the energy innovation necessary to finally break our dependence on foreign oil.
A typical two-car American family that makes $50,000 a year will spend about $10,000 on gas and oil changes at today's prices -- more than we spend on health care or federal taxes. If we increased fuel efficiency by 10% or drove just 10% less, -- neither of which is that hard -- that's $1,000 extra in our pockets. (Did you know that only two out of every ten gallons of gas in your tank actually moves your car – the rest is wasted or idled away. Electric cars apply 75 percent of the energy stored in their batteries to actually moving the car. And we can produce electricity in the United States from clean and sustainable sources.)
We're funding both sides of the war against terror – paying countries for their oil who support terrorism and then paying our military to go over and fight those terrorists. Every $1 increase in the price of a barrel of oil means an additional $1.5 billion to Iran year after year after year. That's an energy and national security disaster.
The oil shock of 2008 helped drive the US economy into the Great Recession. Gasoline prices surged to $4.11 per gallon -- the highest price ever -- driven partly by speculators driving up prices to make a quick killing. Now it's happening again. Overheated speculation in crude oil markets drove up gas prices this past winter, a time of typically declining prices. Even Exxon's CEO and Middle East oil cartel OPEC say they can't control this betting (although they seem to be benefitting from it if you look a their reports to Wall Street). It's not a free market when someone else is gambling with your money but not with your say. Haven't we had enough of that the past few years? Ban these price speculators from again damaging our country and expose them when they do.
After inventing the auto industry, how crazy would it have been for America to let that production go overseas, because we were focused instead on propping up our "horse and buggy" industry? And yet, that's exactly what we're doing with the energy technology of the future. Why are we letting China & Europe build the wind turbines & solar panels that we invented, only to then sell them back to us? [link]
Jobs that make up the clean energy economy grew nearly two and half times faster than US jobs overall between 1998 and 2007 (9.1% compared to 3.7%). While so much else faltered during the Great Recession of the last three years, the clean energy economy grew in every part of the US. And not just where you might think. The #2 solar state in the country is New Jersey, #3 is Colorado, #7 is New York, and #10 is North Carolina.
If you drive down the highway and throw garbage out of the window, the police will stop you and make you pay a fine. But when Big Oil and the coal companies belch thousands of tons of pollutants out of their "windows," they don't pay a penny for it. They pass the cost on to us with higher levels of asthma, undrinkable water, fish we can catch but not eat, and land we can't live on. That's why leading Republican presidential candidates like governors Mitt Romney (Massachusetts), Mike Huckabee (Arkansas), Mitch Daniels (Indiana), and Jon Huntsman (Utah) all favored higher gas taxes. It's why we, too, should make the oil and coal companies pay for their pollution.
The oil industry already holds tens of millions of acres of leases where it's not producing a drop. How about a "use it or lose it" rule for the oil companies who say they don't have enough places to drill? And, if Big Oil can't control prices (and thus apparently can't control their profits) then how about making them pay one penny for every dollar they make and using that money to reduce our federal deficit or invest in cleaner energy? Finally, the US could temporarily draw down millions of barrels of oil it holds in reserve, thus increasing supply and maybe pushing prices a little lower. We're not saying we should do all of these, but what we do know is that there are options other than Big Oil's usual one-note, let-us-have-our-way solution.
