A two speed

[telcoman]

Toilet

Better than off shore drilling

With oil imports running 70% even T Boone Pickens is stating we cannot drill our way out any longer. We need to sharply reduce consumption and move to alternate sources of energy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08...login

August 10, 2008Op-Ed ColumnistFlush With Energy By THOMAS L. FRIEDMANCopenhagen

The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland, is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons — maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!

A day later, I flew back to Denmark. After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!

Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy: “No.” It just forced them to innovate more — like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating. (There are virtually no landfills here.)

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

“I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,” Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. “The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income — so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy.”

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”

If countries like Brazil and Denmark can innovate, what is wrong with the US?

Telcoman

[rn79870]

I think I've changed my opinion on this entire oil problem. As much as it hurts, 4 dollar a gallon gas has benefited us. I'm convinced of that that more people are checking their tire pressure, driving less, combining trips and using more public transportation options.

I see an advantage to off shore drilling that most of the politicians are missing. First of all, it isn't a either or thing. We can drill AND develop alternative technology. We need to do both. Secondly, if we drill and we don't need it, we sell it on the international market. At the worst, that will improve the balance of trade. Win/win.

My vote is simple, if it's there go get it. Assuming of course, that we drill safely and cleanly.

[Marenta]

Even if we decided to stop using oil completely.. China would still consume the oil and we'd still be in the pickle. The only issue would be is that the largest slice of the pie is now gone.

The oil suppliers wouldn't back the prices down once iota even if we stopped importing completely. China and Russia still need oil, and they're willing to pay, too. So, world is still in crisis. And, America is left to defend for itself.

[AZhitman]

I think I've changed my opinion on this entire oil problem. As much as it hurts, 4 dollar a gallon gas has benefited us. I'm convinced of that that more people are checking their tire pressure, driving less, combining trips and using more public transportation options.

My vote is simple, if it's there go get it. Assuming of course, that we drill safely and cleanly.

Award:

Bob's Smartest Post Ever.

/thread.

I said it when gas hit $2.75: There's not a "greenie" in the world who should be hypocritically whining about gas prices unless they want their credibility to be shot. Increased gas prices is a sure-fire, non-artificially manipulated free-market way to give rise to everything the "Save Teh Planet" folks have been clamoring for.

[AZhitman]

The oil suppliers wouldn't back the prices down once iota even if we stopped importing completely. China and Russia still need oil, and they're willing to pay, too. So, world is still in crisis. And, America is left to defend for itself.

No but if one of the candidates "gets" the concrete and steel issue, he's got my vote.

Concrete and steel prices, domestically, have gone through the roof. Yet the economy, unemployment, new home building and everything else gets blamed on bad policies ALONE.

NOT the full story. Concrete and steel are being guzzled by countries like China at an unprecedented rate, reducing domestic supply (we're their chief supplier) and doubling prices locally.

If we jacked up steel prices for export the way OPEC has done oil, we'd see a nice fat return... but that's not the "American Way".

I used to profit from my little exhaust company venture... No more. My raw material prices have nearly tripled since 2005.

Proof? Look around at these places that buy scrap - Look at all the people stealing manhole covers, copper wire, aluminum, etc to sell... It's crazy.

There's always SO much more to the story than the sheeple are willing to believe.

[Marenta]

Yeah, a lot of the outside A/C units have pure copper tubing.. so it's been bad around this area. People breaking into other's A/C units and stealing the copper tubing to sell.

Hell, even catalytic converters are being stolen.. just for that little ittybitty tiny piece of platinum inside.. that's just horse**** if you ask me.

We've got enough old material in the US to just reuse it, I don't know why we don't. Kind of makes me wish I had purchased like 10 or 15 ounces of gold in like 2000 or something, with the way that the prices of rare metals have been going, it's astronomical.

[Cold_Zero]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390821,00.html

I think we need to ask ourselves about T Boone Pickens, what exactly does he have to gain from all this. I really dont believe this man has the United State's best interest in mind when trying to craft energy policy. More like his bottom line at heart.

[AZhitman]

Hell, even catalytic converters are being stolen.. just for that little ittybitty tiny piece of platinum inside.. that's just horse**** if you ask me.

Not really for the platinum, there's a lot of rare elements in a cat.

The real reason is that recyclers are paying $90 for a used cat (at least here in AZ) and it's widely unregulated.

[Marenta]

Given enough time, I can order all the chemicals to make stainless steel. I just need to find a few ceramic tubs that I can do the chemical washes in and I can make stainless steel. But, peh.. what has this country really come down to? We're boiling ourselves down to either mindless drivel or mentally elite.

The shame here, is that the mentally elite aren't procreating like the mindless drivel are.. the drivel seem to be doing it in droves.. hordes.. like they're amassing for a war in trailer parks across the nation.

Anyway, I'm sure that if we ever got as bad as we did in WWII, we'll find a way. We're pretty ingenious when it comes to getting ourselves out of a sticky situation.

[telcoman]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390821,00.html

I think we need to ask ourselves about T Boone Pickens, what exactly does he have to gain from all this. I really dont believe this man has the United State's best interest in mind when trying to craft energy policy. More like his bottom line at heart.

Bud

Very often when the super rich get older and find they have more money than they can spend or use, they decide to give something back. Some set up foundations or travel to other parts of the world.T Boone is pointing out and putting up his own money what many have known for quite some time. That our present administration beholden to lobbyists is out of touch with reality and leading this country down the wrong path

Fox news is known for unfair, unbalanced, often wrong and a tool of the present administration.

https://www.cia.gov/library/pu....html

"Soaring oil prices in 2005-2007 threatened inflation and unemployment, yet the economy continued to grow through year-end 2007. Imported oil accounts for about two-thirds of US consumption. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups. The merchandise trade deficit reached a record $847 billion in 2007. Together, these problems caused a marked reduction in the value and status of the dollar worldwide in 2007. "

Telcoman
Modified by telcoman at 3:09 PM 8/10/2008