I think we need to drill for oil off coast. If we don\'t, our children\'s future will be harsh.
Why? We drilled endlessly in the early 1900\'s, the oil boom of America. Our future already looks harsh because of our dependence on black gold.
The problem with drilling off coast is that it won\'t lower gas prices. It\'s not the availability of gas that is driving prices up, it is Wallstreet. People have been buying lots of petroleum bonds, and speculators keep saying it will go higher because of our thirst for it, thus driving the value of it up.
Most people think that our energy industry is like currency. The more in production or circulation, the cheaper. It doesn\'t work that way, the more in production the more we use. The more we use, the more expensive it becomes.
If we drill of coast, that won\'t budge the gas prices one bit. Saudi Arabia recently agreed to up its output of crude oil, you\'ll notice gas either stayed the same or went higher. Why? Because investors knew that more would be consumed at that point, creating a larger and larger market for petroleum, making it more valuable.
Plus there are many environmental and personal risks to drilling off shore, drilling for oil as it is isn\'t safe, now doing that over water makes it riskier. Plus in the Gulf to boot! Imagine what happens if a big hurricane comes through, those platforms could easily be heavily damaged, OR destroyed by the power of storms. It\'s like playing in the freeway.
People think by decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, we will be better off. Their solution is drill at home. What we aren\'t realizing is the consequences of this. Oil is a fossil fuel, nonrenewable resource right? An oil field in Texas started forming at the beginning of time, and will be exhausted in a about decade if our oil consumption continues to climb. The earth simply can not keep producing fossil fuels, the time it takes to form a deposit that will pay for itself is way into the future.
By not investing in a form of energy that we can use as many times as we want, THAT is what will be putting the hurt on the future. Yeah, it\'s not cheap now. But with time and as the renewable resource industry grows, it will become cheaper and more prominent. While if we waited till we absolutely needed to use renewable energy, the prices of production and the higher demands would be impossible to meet if we don\'t exploit and further research how to improve efficiency in this gold mine of clean energy.
The environment also plays a big role. We can\'t trash the place up, you see what happens to contaminated streams after DDT poisoning from the early 1900s, the pesticides we use are nasty. Just think of how damaging petroleum is, with a higher sulfur content it is bad news for any living creature. We think we can contain it, but we can\'t. When drilling for oil, gases are released immediately after you hit the well. When coal mining, toxins escape the mines and enter streams and aquifers.
Whether we like it or not, we need to prepare ourselves for the future of our children and grandchildren. We can\'t achieve that by exhausting our main fuel sources, and leaving them a screwed up environment to boot.