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Gulf spill raises questions about future U.S. energy policy – Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON — The Gulf oil spill not only has altered the landscape of the Gulf Coast , it also has completely changed the debate over national energy policy.

“Drill, baby, drill,” which drilling proponents chanted until a few weeks ago, has been replaced by “Spill, baby, spill,” from opponents. Politicians from the West Coast to Florida propose banning new drilling on the outer continental shelf.

Lawmakers from oil-producing states like Texas and Louisiana , however, warn that shutting off offshore reservoirs hurts domestic production and increases reliance on foreign oil. Environmentalists counter that it’s time for renewables such as wind and solar.

Can the U.S. rely on that strategy, however, especially short term?

President Barack Obama appeared to answer that Friday by saying the federal government would ramp up its environmental oversight of exploration but that offshore drilling was still key to U.S. energy policy.

“Now, as I’ve said before, domestic oil drilling continues to be one part of an overall energy strategy that now includes more clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency than at any other time in our history,” Obama said. “But it’s absolutely essential that going forward we put in place every necessary safeguard and protection so that a tragedy like this oil spill does not happen again.”

Just weeks before the April 20 BP oil rig blowout — which has sent at least 5,000 barrels a day spewing into the Gulf — Obama announced the end of a moratorium on oil exploration in East Coast waters. That’s now off the table, as the administration suspended all new drilling proposals for 90 days.

“What you plainly see is a rethinking by Congress and by the administration about what to do,” said Wesley Warren , the director of programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council , an environmental group. “Our national energy policy is broken, and nothing demonstrates that more than this spill.”

Public support for offshore oil drilling has dropped, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center , which found that 54 percent of respondents said they favored allowing more offshore drilling for oil and gas in U.S. waters, down from 63 percent in early February and 68 percent in April 2009 . The poll was conducted May 6-9 among 994 adults.

“Virtually all of the decline in support for offshore drilling has occurred among Democrats and independents, as Republicans remain as supportive as they were before the spill,” according to the Pew Research Center .

A proposal by Sens. John Kerry , D- Mass. , and Joe Lieberman , a Connecticut independent, made public this week and that’s being shaped into legislation would put severe limits on drilling options by giving states numerous checks on federal permits.

“It’s a shift in thinking,” Warren said. “This proposal a month ago would have looked fairly different.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman , D- Calif. , said during a hearing Wednesday, “One lesson is already apparent from the catastrophe in the Gulf: We need an energy policy that emphasizes clean, renewable sources of energy.”

When he went on to say that it was time to “take on the oil companies,” Rep. Joe Barton of Texas , the panel’s ranking Republican, was livid about the dig at Big Oil “as if that was an adversarial situation.”

“There’s a reason we’re an oil-based economy,” Barton said. “There’s tremendous productivity potential. The only place to find real oil deposits in meaningful quantities is in the outer continental shelf.”

In response to calls to stop further offshore drilling, Barton said, “Do not use this accident to fence off what is probably the biggest domestic energy resource we have on the American continent.”

Sen. Mary Landrieu , D- La. , a strong supporter of expanded domestic production, said the American people were realistic about the nation’s energy needs.

“I am encouraged by the American people’s ability to see through the emotional aspects of this tragedy and understand the country needs to produce more oil and gas domestically, not less,” Landrieu said. “It is clear that the public realizes that even as we move to cleaner, renewable energy, we will still need oil to get us through that transition.”

The federal moratorium on drilling offshore, which dated to the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, was lifted in 2008 by Congress and President George W. Bush , at a time of high gasoline prices.

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Oil spill: BP had wrong diagram to close blowout preventer

Gulf oil spill inquiry focuses on role of costly drilling mud

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf

Researchers worry about oil dispersants’ impact, too

McClatchy’s oil spill coverage

Follow the latest politics news at McClatchy’s Planet Washington

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Searching Alternative Forms Of Energy

Record high prices at American gas pumps and continued trouble-brewing in the Middle East, Nigeria, and other areas of importance to the oil-driven economy have made it clear to Americans that we are in need of developing many new avenues of energy supply and production. In short, we need to reduce our dependency on oil, for it is ultimately finite and, frankly, the cheap sources of oil (not all oil—just the stuff that is cheap to remove from the earth) are running out. Energy consultants and analysts are insistent that cheap oil has “peaked” or is very soon going to peak. What this means for us is an expensive future—unless we can find new sources of powering our mechanized and electronic civilization, new sources which are alternatives to oil.

We must also switch to alternative forms of energy because our present forms are too damaging to the atmosphere. While this write does not believe that the global warming trend is much, if at all, sustained by the activities of mankind (in short, it’s a natural cycle and there’s nothing we can do about it except prepare for the effects of it), we certainly do contribute at present to the destruction of the environment and to things like air pollution with our energy sources as they are. Coal is another source of energy that we need to wean ourselves off of—again, it is finite, and it is filthy, and the mining of it is dangerous and environmentally disruptive. We can also explore new, streamlined methods for producing electricity that we presently generate so much of via hydro-power so that we are less disruptive of the environment when we have need of constructing things such as large dams.

Developing nations which have turned industrialized in recent decades especially will need the benefits of alternative energy research and development, for they are presently doing much more environmental damage than the United States. The United States, Japan, and some European nations have been implementing studies into and programs for the development of alternative energy sources, and are therefore already leading the way in doing less environmental damage. The developing nations such as China and India need to look to Japan and the West as examples of what research and development to give government backing and private investment currency to. We could also add great robustness to our own economy by being at th
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e forefront of such alternative energy sources development and then marketing the technologies and services to nations like India, China, Brazil, and so on and so forth.

Biofuels from things like “supertrees” and soybeans, refined hydroelectric technology, natural gas, hydrogen fuel cells, the further building of atomic energy plants, the continued development of solar energy photovoltaic cells, more research into wind-harnessed power—all of these are viable energy sources that can act as alternatives to the mammoth amounts of oil and coal that we presently are so dependent on for our very lifestyles. The energy of the future is green.

By: Don Davis

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Don Davis has been doing lots of studies on alternative energy for years. For more information, visit his blog : review4homemadeenergy.blogspot.com/

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