BLOG IN YOUR FACE

Over the course of the last few months I have been involved in a series of (sometimes) friendly arguments with Braden at Braden’s Corner of the Web about drilling for oil. His side of the argument is that we should drill on American soil for oil in order to drive the prices down. I on the other hand have argued that the only way to drive the price of oil down is to reduce our consumption.

Trent at The Simple Dollar wrote a great article in his weekly mailbag that I feel pretty much sums up my thoughts on the oil companies. Here is an excerpt:

“The solution is to put that support infrastructure in place right now. If you want to break up dependence on oil, look at individual consumer and political action. Buy highly fuel-efficient cars, or even look at all-electric options (yes, there are some). Use public transportation. Work politically to get people elected that will encourage such things - yes, even going so far as to support the Green Party, if need be. Don’t just focus on the presidential race, either - focus on the local race for Congress in your area and also for the state legislature. Who are the candidates and where do they stand on those issues? Work to support the greenest candidates by putting up signs and telling your neighbors. In other words, fight oil dependence at the revenue level, not at the profit level, while building a different transportation infrastructure.

I’m very serious about this. In fact, I’m strongly considering buying a Tesla Whitestar for our next car for most of our driving needs, even at the relatively high cost. Over a reasonable lifetime, no gas cost is potentially huge savings, as is the vastly reduced maintenance costs of having minimal moving parts in a vehicle. Pushing that curve is something that can bring about big change. If five million American families did that instead of griping about gas prices, profound changes would begin occurring very rapidly, as competitors would jump in and drive the price down, making electric cars compete in price with gas cars. When that happens, electric cars win in a landslide.”

We don’t have to go to extremes to bring down the price of oil. But if every American just did a little something…ANYTHING…like carpool, buy smaller cars, turn off lights and unused appliances, buy electric cars or small gas powered scooters, ride the bus, run, walk, blah blah blah BLAHHHHHH…

I still say we don’t need to drill for oil. But what do I know…I’m just a hippie environmentalist, that’s all.