If you think taxes are a positive thing when it comes to managing supply and demand, you are living in the wrong century. Keynesian economics has long been discredited.

Who says oil is not a renewable resource? I explained in my post how it is most certainly renewable with current technology, and at a lower cost than we have now.

I don’t see the value of US oil ever decreasing. Common sense says we should be able to use a non-renewable asset in a way that produces value that exceeds the increasing value of an idle asset idle. I don’t aggressively support new drilling because I just don’t trust the corporate bucks being made short term tapping out supplies will be properly used to buy time long term.

Heavy taxation as Icarus proposes is the best means to drive both conservation and technology.

Addressing another thread within the thread, the “after expenses” aspect of corporate tax rates is typically not considered when comparing real corporate and personal income tax rates. There are significant personal exemptions and deductions of course, but generally speaking the basic principal expenses of our lives (shelter and food) used to create income (savings used mostly for taxable shelter and food when we’re no longer productive) are largely taxed, yet the expenses of the corporation used by the corporation in its “life” of generating income are largely deductible from taxation.

With gas, food, and electricity prices so high, one wonders how eager most Americans would be now to have to pay Linder’s 30 cents on the dollar sales tax.

Talk about drilling….

Exxon indeed paid a tremendous amount of income taxes in 2007, amounting to a little less than $30 billion under generally accepted accounting principles. However, the actual cash outlays for income taxes were less at $26 billion.

Source: Exxon Moble SEC Form 10-K for 2007.

I was actually surprised that the cash payments were so close to the financial accounting tax figure.

I’m pretty sure Shep is referring to Linder, and not to you in his comment.

If not, well, he’s stressed from making contingency battle plans for the war against the water theives.

As for staying on topic, no we cannot get off oil, and there is no reason we should.

Isn’t it revealing that such a response seems to indicate more of an interest in creating more government power under the guise of “getting us off oil” than some level of happiness that the problem can be solved without government?

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=127328

$4/gallon appears to be quite a tipping point. Pols in both parties should take notice.

Tell him about the Icarus energy plan TM.

Tell him I’ll co-sponsor a book with him, but I’ll take the trouble of writing it, and we’ll split the profits.

He’ll be on board.

Something just ain’t right.

While hydrogen sounds like a solution to cars and trucks, it isn’t. It always takes more energy to separate the 2 H’s from the O in water than you get when you burn them as fuel. That makes hydrogen very expensive as a fuel.

Solar is also not a solution to generating power. There simply is not enough wattage per square foot on the brightest part of the day to generate much power. It would take hundreds of thousands of square miles of land to generate the power we need, and I don’t see anyone wanting to clear-cut that much land. Besides, solar energy has to be stored so that it can be converted and used when the sun is blocked by clouds, or during the night. That kind of storage is a toxic chemical nightmare.

Same with wind farms. Other than the pleasure of aggravating the Kennedys, it just doesn’t generate that much power.

However, there is one very good solution. It reduces pollution, reduces the cost of gas and diesel, and burns cleaner, and needs very little refining. It can be in mass production long befroe we could get any new oil wells and refineries up, and can easily generate over half the oild we use now without using any food crops.

Bell Bio-Energy in Tifton has perfected the process of using biowaste – not food stuffs – to make oil without the high energy requirements previous methods have used. They use the same process nature uses where microbes break down biowatse into oil. And, one good side effect is that it doesn’t introduce any new carbon into the atmosphere.

Their solution doesn’t require any changes to existing auto technology. Just clean gasoline and zero-sulfur, zero-wax diesel.

And if the dems want to tell everyone that is currently paying $4/gallon that a solar plant is about to come on line, I would be glad to take that to the voters verses a plan for more drilling.

Republicans aren’t against new technologies. We just don’t believe they’re a magic solution to all of our ills.

And I’ll dial back the partisanship a notch if you like, but I guess I want to know what a democrat is willing to give up to solve the problem. You’ve got two Republicans willing to give you a tax increase on oil to curtail supply, with an offset to low income tax brackets.

Serious question, what if anything are those of you who consider yourself Democrats willing to give to find a middle ground solution?

Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Democrat Energy plans: They’re all the same.

OK, that’s preposterous. I’m not sure when you attempted to dial back from what was a rather rationale attempt at discussion over policy and launch into your own partisan attacks against Andre and other Democrats, but whatever …

But your own logic painted yourself into a corner. When presented with evidence that solar technology is showing significant breakthroughs, you argue ‘well, how much does it cost‘ … and then proceed to argue against advancements in energy technology even happening.

To compare a Democratic strategy for energy policy with Santa Claus and other fictional characters suggests that the technology and emerging technology which drives said policy doesn’t exist, but you can’t make that argument since, in your own proposal, you conceded that it does, indeed, exist.

So, what would be a Democratic energy policy, one that stresses conservation rather than exploration. This is a legitimate policy distinction. Both sides agree that we have to ween ourselves off of foreign oil, and the conservative argument is to boost domestic production and, presumably, use that as a cushion until we diversify our energy resources.

The progressive argument is to boost conservation through fuel-efficiency and increases in technology, and use that as a cushion until we diversify our energy resources.

Again, there are reasonable and coherent arguments for and against both sides.

You’ve got myself and Farris on here saying we’re even willing to increase taxes in exchange for increased drilling. Dems keep wanting to make promises of some future tech breakthrough that will magically cure our ills.

Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Democrat Energy plans: They’re all the same.

There are many new developments in solar energy. Sharp is building the world’s largest solar cell factory and solar is big in Arizona and Utah now.