Quote:
Originally Posted by joemac
Can we come up with any more excuses NOT to do something to change the landscape of what fuels our vehicles?!?!?!?!  |
Why is pointing out real world limitations to the world of biofuels considered making an excuse? Personally, I might support doing it, but only as part of a comprehensive plan that includes drill, drill, drill.
When it comes to our Congress critters mandating anything, the first question to ask is "How much does it cost?"
The second question to ask is "Who pays for it?"
Too often the answer to the first question is "Too much." That never slows down the government when "something" has to be done.
The answer to the second question is always "You do." The oil and gas companies will pass the cost of adding E85 pumps along to you, the consumer, by raising the price of their other products to cover it. If the government "pays" for it through either tax breaks for the companies or by directly funding it out of the Treasury in some manner you, the taxpayer, still pay for it.
In the long run it might need doing, but it ain't gonna be cheap for any of us. That's why I say I'll support it as long as we include drill, drill, drill. The extra oil brought to market by tapping our nation's reserves will help defray the extra cost at the pump that will be tacked on to the price of gas in order to fund E85 and other alternative fuels.
I'm no economist, but a crude picture of it might look like this. If we just did drill, drill, drill the price of gas at the pump might (operative word: MIGHT) drop eventually to under $2 a gallon. That's too low to support any desire to change our energy infrastructure and sooner or later we'd find ourselves in the same place we are today. It might take 10, 20, or 50 years but it would happen again.
If we don't drill and just mandate E85 without adding any new oil, the price of a gallon of gas will remain close to $4 a gallon or go higher to pay for the infrastructure improvements demanded by the government. That's too high. It's killing our economy TODAY. I'm all for new technology and finding new sources of renewable energy, but all of that will take YEARS to develop. We need relief in our energy costs now if we want to have more capital tomorrow to develop the new technology.
If we do both, the price of gas at the pump might level off below $3 a gallon. It's still higher than I personally might like, but it's livable. Some of the savings we would get with just drill, drill, drill are eaten up by funding E85 mandates, but we're all still getting a break compared to the price of energy today. Capital that is now going into our gas tanks is freed up for other uses, including the funding of research into biofuels and everything else.
This is a long term, by which I mean 25+ years, problem. We need to do it all (biofuels, nuclear, and drilling) today, accepting our current technological limitations but working steadily on overcoming them. The problem is that one side of the aisle in Congress doesn't seem to want to include the drill, drill, drill that we need today to pay for whatever alternative energy sources we might develop tomorrow.