Maddow's ideas about needed adjustments to our current oil policies are dead on:
- Recognize that the oil industry (not just BP) has lied to us about the safety of its operations.
- Prevent putting America at the risk of national environmental disaster ever again.
- Moratorium on oil drilling until safety has been proven.
- Fix the regulations and the regulators.
- Make oil companies prove that they can deal with all the possible risks before they are allowed to drill on our coasts.
- Direct BP to fund boom and skim clean-up training and mobilize every resource to clean-up.
- Get America off oil dependency:
- Senate to pass Energy Bill.
- Targets for renewable energy and alternative sources to be doubled or tripled.
- Some other details from David Sandalow's "Freedom from Oil"
- If you agree that "The Oil Age is Over", tell your Senator.
For over 30 years, Presidents and environmentalists have been pleading for the US to stop its addiction to oil. But that hasn't happened, Why? Because America tops the list in oil consumption (almost three times that of #2, China), and the US military is the largest consumer of oil in the world to keep its Hummers rolling, its ships afloat, and its jets flying. Our US Air Force uses 2.5 billion gallons of fuel each year and that number is rising each year. Except for nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers, almost all military vehicles and craft (including those joining the forces in the next ten years) operate on petroleum-based fuels.
Our dependence on oil might be easier to break if we were to fully burden the price of gasoline with the true cost of oil. The price of $75 for a 50-gallon barrel of oil needs to be factored in with the cost of protecting our oil imports, government subsidies to lease land to oil companies at deeply discounted rates, the costs of pollution (the BIG one today), and the overall effect on our global climate. For now, let's just ignore the cost of all the lives lost directly and indirectly to our oil addiction. Experts estimate that if our price at the pump were burdened with all the true costs, that it would be closer to $5 to $8 per gallon.
A fill-up for $150 makes that electric car sound pretty reasonable now, huh?
A fill-up for $150 makes that electric car sound pretty reasonable now, huh?
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