|
I do agree that our consumer culture is excessive. Who really needs a 4500 square foot house for a family of four? We have gotten used to a lot of things that use a lot of energy. Some of them good things. I am glad that I get to shower daily instead of bathing just once a week. I like A/C in summer and heat in the winter. No matter how big our houses or our cars, we need to make sure that they are efficient. I hate those plumbing ads where they have created a human car wash. Sure each shower head only uses 2.5 gpm of water but there are 10 of them. Our electronics are also sucking up a lot of power even when they are "off". This is ridiculous.
As far as drilling is concerned, it will probably not really affect the price of gas in the long term. I am still for it for the following reasons: 1. Americans seem to have a "Not in my backyard" mentality. We are willing to pollute other parts of the world for our oil but not our own (and no I don't think we should pollute our own but we have stricter controls). 2. Many of the oil supplying countries hate us. I would rather pay our own companies and economy. 3. Oil is going to remain an important energy source in the near future even if we turn all of our cars into electric.
Out of the available energy, conservation has by far the least impact. Oil is not the only source of energy with issues - coal is dirty but abundant, nuclear has problems with pollution from mining and from disposal and can be dangerous to use, large scale hydro damages ecosystems, solar is expensive and inefficient, wind kills birds and bats and can be unsightly. The good thing about the high current cost of oil is it makes us think and people have been modifying their behavior. Hopefully it will stay high enough to make those modifications permanent since Congress has been unwilling to take decisive action. The dollar has a greater impact anyway.
|