I have a love affair with oil in the same way I love TV and sugar. I pretend I don't rely on them. I plant my garden in the spring, skip the transfats for the most part and do nice things when I can without asking too much in return. But I don't have solar panels and the personal windmill is a long way off. I even keep the house a bit warm so I can wear shorts most days. But I never thought Canadian oil - my oil - was...you know...so dirty:
The legislation won't allow any U.S. federal agencies to buy vehicle fuel derived from non-conventional sources unless the life cycle of its greenhouse-gas emissions is the same or less than that of conventional petroleum. The sticky bitumen in Alberta's tar sands is considered one of the world's biggest potential sources of energy, but it's also one of the dirtiest in terms of carbon dioxide emissions because it takes so much power to wring it out of the soil in which it's trapped, putting it in the crosshairs of the new rules.Now I feel really bad. You think that having a democratic system pumping out the stuff and an general absence of a grey plume over the continent would help out a little in these matters. You expect those sorts of things to be the little umph that gets you through a recession or two, riding a little wave of we are here and we are here to help out. But no. We got the dirty stuff. Damn.
Comments
David Janes - January 15, 2008 8:34 AM
<ol>
<li> fungibility</li>
<li>US doesn't want Canadian gas? We'll see. I guess there goes the invasion
</ol>
Alan - January 15, 2008 8:45 AM
No, it's not fungible at all. The classic example is the penny: one penny is no different from another. But oil isn't oil anymore. Ours is dirty. I feel dirty.
David Janes - January 15, 2008 9:09 AM
Right -- but if they don't buy our oil they'll have to buy the oil from somewhere else. This would increase the price of oil (more demand = higher price) except that because oil is fungible _other_ consumers would start purchasing our oil, bringing everything back to equilibrium.
"American Armor". Funny and apropos.
Paul of Kingston - January 15, 2008 10:11 AM
Canada's dirty big secret. Now do we understand the Bloc Alberta's continual lip service to realistic measures for dealing with GHG emissions? The real magic here is how Steve managed to get John B, an Ontario boy, to be his chief bodyguard for his Alberta tarbiz.
Personally I would avoid tar derived petroleum if I could but unfortunately all the majors are in.
The NRTEE's recommendation for a carbon tax is a good one - it's progressive in that it seeks to tax what we as a society don't want rather than what we do. If we learned something from the ozone and acid rain issues it should be that bilateral regulation and economic disincentives work where "industry leadership" and voluntary compliance would have shone us all on for another decade or so.
ry - January 16, 2008 4:06 PM
Well, if the energy used to power the extraction was nuclear derrived then the carbon footprint of the tar sands would be much smaller. (Making up for backlog of annoying comments quota.)
Alan - January 16, 2008 4:13 PM
Hardly making up for it! We've even had a FredHead debate and you've been no where.
ry - January 16, 2008 11:31 PM
Al, I know I've been gone for a while. I've been busy. You know, helping a foreign national widow whose husband died and all that. Very time consuming since they don't speak much English and, well, my Japanese isn't very good. But we do try.
Of course I missed the GX40 Glee Club. (COuld've used some lawyer-ish advice too at one point or another in all this.)
Fred Thompson? Eh. Take him or leave him. HE doesn't stoke me up. Sure, he talks a Federalist game, but just like the people who promise 'massive change in gov't" it's all a pose. You can't change the nature of gov't substantially like that in one throw. So, big deal. FredHead and Dr. Paul can jabber all they want. I'm not buying. But SWWBO has.
Alan - January 17, 2008 8:45 AM
Anyone who cloaks themselves in the Constitution looks too much like someone who does the same with the Bible. They are not cloaks.
ry - January 17, 2008 5:05 PM
Al, now you're just being mean. All those sit-ups do something to your blood pressure?(Hey, put that shot put down. Why are you aiming at me head?)
Pointing out where gov't has 'broken'(opinion of some, not an established fact) the rules clearly outlined in the Ruling Document without a change in the Ruling Document is somehow stealing third from first base? I don't think so. I just think they're making empty promises. Just like where's Bill CLinton's middle class tax cut he promised us in 1992? Universal healthcare? Unless one party sweeps Congress that isn't going to be un-fillerbusterable. Ain't that cloaking one's self in populism?
The idea that gov't has accrued power it was never intended to have is not a bad thing to campaign on. It's not even a bad idea(gov't has taken on powers it never was intended to have without a major re-write of the Con, which is why FDR almost had to 'pack the court' to get the New Deal thru the Judicial branch.). Saying that everyone who mentions it is somehow cloaking themselves dastardly in something is a bit much. Call it what it is, an empty promise. I can think of people on the otherside of the political divide, who aren't dastardly planning nefarious deeds, who are doing the same thing on other issues. Don't insert evil as a cause for something when simple lying for votes suffices.
Alan - January 17, 2008 5:27 PM
Well, I will agree if you accept that it is a serial empty promise that both sides have relied upon when it was the right using the Court to vacate the promise of the Constitution (and the hope earned by victory in the Civil War). The cloaking is as much a cloaking of intentions as anything as well as even a tyrant could use strict interpretation to his own end in the way that Satan relies on the Gospel. That is why it is never a winning argument politically so much as a handy tool, the joker more than trump card, in debate once elected. Given that I do not see Fred as wicked or scheming it also, therefore seems incongruous - especially given we have the opposite sort of thing happening up here with the nihilist dissolvist schemings of our right.