If only I had the energy to cull through the bullshit

The president was in Michigan yesterday, and in Colorado today, talking about energy independence. What a novel idea.

The oil we consume in this important sector comes from foreign countries, most of it does.  In 1985, three-quarters of the crude oil used in U.S. refineries came from America; today that equation has changed dramatically.  Less than half the crude oil used in our refineries is produced here at home, 60 percent comes from foreign countries. Things have changed since 1985.

Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments, or fundamental differences with the United States.  These countries know we need their oil and that reduces influence.  It creates a national security issue when we're held hostage for energy by foreign nations that may not like us.

So the president is now up to about 1997. If we're lucky, maybe he'll reach the 21st Century by the end of his administration.

The energy bill he touted yesterday was one of those things that just makes you shake your head and wonder at the depravity of the people in Washington. A serious attempt at reducing our dependence on foreign oil (most of our oil comes from Canada, by the way, those crafty Canuck bastards) would have included an across-the-board increase in the CAFE fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. If we want to use less oil, it makes sense to make cars run using less oil.

The energy bill also gave huge payouts to the oil and nuclear energy companies. Subsidies that weren't needed in light of the record profits reported by most (I say most even though there are only like 3 oil companies total) Big Oil companies.

The rest of his speech was a bunch of factoids that I can only assume are totally made up and calls for increases in government spending. I'm a liberal, so nobody loves spending the people's money like I do, but even we know when to cut back in a few places. This guy is worse than a binge drinker with a credit card. I mean, wasn't he supposed to be cutting the deficit in half by 2009 or something?

He did talk about new technologies that might make cars a little less gas-guzzling like hybrids, though. Except hybrids are prohibitively expensive in my view, and they don't really save that much on fuel. Hydrogen is a decade or more away from having the infrastructure necessary to replace gasoline. And ethanol and methanol are more like fuel additives than replacements. The only source I see as a true alternative is biodiesel.

I'll be working on a column discussing that aspect the rest of the morning, so we'll stop there and return to the main thrust of the post, that the president is full of shit.

If the president really wanted solve the problem, we've known how for decades. But his stubborn refusal to acknowledge there was a problem until fairly recently kept real solutions and innovations from being available in the short term. And our oil dependence is a short and long-term problem. In the short term, people will need an alternative that quickly replaces or extends oil use so that as prices continue to rise, their pocketbooks won't suffer. Also, we're spending inordinate amounts of money to protect pipelines in places like Columbia so that we can feed our need.

In the long term, we're going to have serious problems with China and India over the dwindling amount of oil left for refining as their economies boom. By 2025, we may have already fought a world war with both of them for the last drops of oil in the ground. Unless we begin to invest in infrastructure for the next major fuel source.

If we plan on using hydrogen fuel cells, then we need to develop a way to cheaply extract hydrogen from water, safely store and transport the hydrogen to depots around the country, then store it in vehicles for use as fuel.

If we go with biodesel, then we have to talk everyone into buying diesel-engine vehicles and not throwing away used kitchen grease. We also might want to figure out a way to keep the grease from freezing in extreme cold areas so that we don't lose vehicles during winter.

By being prepared, we stay ahead of the curve in the global economy. While China and India spend huge amounts of money to feed the energy beast as oil increases in price, we will have innovated and become self-sufficient energy wise. But it will take a serious committment to do all of this. Even with all the evidence to the contrary, I still hope this signals a change from this White House.