For you guys who don't understand EXPORTING oil. We export the oil from Alaska to Japan, because the tankers can't get through the Panama Canal to the Gulf coast refineries. We in turn buy oil that Japan would buy for the same price from somewhere else. We also sometimes export oil to Mexico to be refined during refinery maintenance shut downs or hurricane damage. It is then imported back as gasoline or diesel. So that is a wash.
97% of Obama's appointees are Ivory Tower liberal professors and lawyers. (Bill Clinton had 50% appointees from business and industry for you die hard dems). They are from the East coast or West coast. Big cities have more mass transit. They don't realise that suburbs, small towns, and rural areas have longer driving distance. Some have businesses, thus use trucks, which are lower in gas mileage. Some have 2-3 kids, thus need an SUV, because cars are too small to carry kids, groceries, balls, bats, tennis rackets and such. Some just don't understand this.
No one is going to pay $40k for a hybrid that gets 50-75 mpg if they can pay 12 K for a small gas car that gets 32 mpg. They can still buy a lot of gas for $20-30 k, not counting lower monthly payments, and lower insurance. Doesn't make sense yet.
Windmills are only good in low populated windy states. So, the rest of the more dense populated areas must rely on coal (50%), nuclear (20%), natural gas (10% and rising), hydro (10%), wind and solar (10% or less). All of these fuels are American produced and not imported thus are far less voliatle.
OIL IS THE PROBLEM. 50% of our trade deficit is imported oil which relies on WORLD market prices, which makes it highly unstable. We have 200 million vehicles (AND THEY ARE NOT GOING AWAY IN THE NEXT 20 OR SO YEARS), not counting all trains, planes, and ships that use oil, diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline. This is the problem that needs solving, not hybrids, not solar and wind (it will come naturally if you just let it alone).
We could solve this problem within 5-10 years easily.
1) Use natural gas for city buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks like Fedex, UPS and postal, school buses, city vehicles. This would cut 40% of the imported oil.
2) Use more diesel vehicles, which are lower in price than hybrids, but get an average 20% better mileage than gasoline. This would cut 20-30% of the imported oil.
3) Drill our own oil, Alaska, on government lands, offshore. This should cut another 10-20% of imported oil.
All this money stays in the US and is thus spent in the US which will help the economy.
Finally figure out a way, either by tarriffs on imported oil or tax breaks, to develop coal gasification and/or algae oil production.
We also have to build more nuke plants in the east for the simple reason wind and solar are not cost effective outside the plains states except in a very few areas. This would eventually replace the coal, which then can be made into oil and gas for transportation fuels.
Coal miners are happy, oil companies are happy, Americans are happy with lower fuel costs, more people back to work, thus more tax revenue to the government without raising taxes. Everyone should be happy.
