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"This column recently spotlighted Pickens' proposed plan to get America off foreign oil by substituting wind-generated electricity for natural gas-generated electricity and then using the natural gas to replace gasoline. Already having addressed the proposal's flaws — and Pickens' plan to profit at taxpayer expense from it — let's consider how Pickens' marketing shades the truth. "In 1970, we imported 24 percent of our oil. Today, it's nearly 70 percent and growing," he intones. Aside from the fact that the Department of Energy (DOE) puts the import figure at a more moderate 58 percent, Pickens gives the impression that imported oil is scary because it all comes from the unstable Mideast. But hold the phone. Only 16 percent of our imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf — barely up from 13.6 percent in 1973, according to the DOE. Imports from OPEC countries are actually down — from 47.8 percent in 1973 to 44.5 percent in 2007. Contrary to Pickens' assertion that oil imports are growing, the DOE expects oil imports to decrease by 10 percent by 2030. Pickens tries to shame Americans because, "America uses a lot of oil ... That's 25 percent of the world's oil demand, used by just 4 percent of the world population." Some might think these figures make us sound greedy and wasteful. But what Pickens omitted to mention is that the size of the U.S. economy in 2007 was about $13.8 trillion and the size of the global economy was $54.3 trillion. This means that the U.S. economy represents about 25.4 percent of the global economy. So what's the problem if a nation that produces 25 percent of the world's goods and services needs 25 percent of the world's oil output?"............. Full Article Link >>
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A Knight in 'Tarnished' Armor
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Well I think that we should be ashamed of ourselves. The facts are we could and should have done something like this a long time ago. Before the first oil embargo. There's no reason that we should be at the mercy of any other nation for our energy needs period. As for doing more drilling please give me a break that's only putting a band-aid over the wound and not healing the injury. Alternative sources are what we as a nation should be focusing on instead of whining about oil prices. Didn't we learn ANYTHING from the embargoes of the past? Are we that selfish as a people that we can't bite the bullet and suffer being inconvenienced to rid ourselves of this addiction to oil? We call ourselves the Mightiest Nation, A Super Power, please it's only going to take shutting off the oil to make us beg like the junkies we are.
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Here and Gone like the Wind
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