Exxon: " You will always be slaves, so stop trying to be free"

[montana500]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11221159/

"HOUSTON - The United States will always rely on foreign imports of oil to feed its energy needs and should stop trying to become energy independent, a top Exxon Mobil Corp. executive said on Tuesday.

“Realistically, it is simply not feasible in any time period relevant to our discussion today,” Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stuart McGill said, referring to what he called the “misperception” that the United States can achieve energy independence.

The comments, in a speech at an energy conference in Houston, come a few days after U.S. President George W. Bush declared America was addicted to Middle Eastern oil and promised to help the country kick the habit"

[derby378]

1. "I'm Wayne Brady, bitch!"

God, the nerve of that guy. My wife says, "We can at least get started, can't we?"

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[northzax]

2. he's right, you know

a dedicated program with unlimited funding might wean the US off of foreign fossil fuels in 25-30 years. In that time frame, we are still dependant on foreign oil. So we need realistic plans to deal with that.

[Clara T]

3. Change our lifestyles

Shorten the food links in our food distribution methods?

Cut military budget in half?- right there we pick up 25 years.

Change the way we think about work?

Eliminate the need to commute?

Reduce consumption?

Stop travelling so much? Tourism for the leisure class must go.

Stop having 30,000 kids in very warm dorm rooms and socially engineering them to be obedient consumers?

OR

Burn up the planet.

[Glorfindel]

4. Easy to do, not so easy to legislate...

raise the tax on gasoline to $10.00 per gallon. I'd be delighted, but then I hate to drive and I walk to work.
:D

[northzax]

5. overnight? you're joking

I assume you use no petroleum products in your daily life? no plastics, no electricity from any source but nuclear, coal, solar or wind? do you live on a farm, or within biking distance of one? what exactly are you surfing the web on? a stone tablet?

I don't see how cutting the military budget buys us 25 years, please explain. the Military doesn't use all that much petroleum, US commuters use more in a day than the military uses in a year. We use more in a week to generate electricity than the military uses in a year.

sure, we could go to the Stone Age overnight and eliminate fossil fuels, but the following things would disappear: towns, cities, electricity, food, clean water...should I go on?

Yes, consume less. great idea. But it cannot happen overnight. Needing to import oil is irrelevant in the global system, we need to eliminate oil. As long as there is a global market, we can't use any oil and not be dependant on the international prices. Doing so immediately, without a replacement, we get complete chaos and a breakdown of our entire system. welcome to 1795.

invest in replacements and new technology, immediately. but let's not delude ourselves into thinking it will happen overnight.

[Clara T]

8. Can you point to where "overnight"

was stated in the post?

An f-16 uses more fuel in One hours' flight than the average US motorist uses in two years.

The US Navy uses 16% of the worlds' diesel each year.

Abrams tank gets 4 gallons to the mile (not a misprint)

Now of course it is easy to see who is the worlds worst polluter, by far.

Could go on and provide links and all that but you can do the research if you care to.

If we don't make dramatic changes in the way we think and live we will destroy the biosphere. Is everyone ready to consider the level of change we need to make? Obviously not. Very difficult.

The Stone Age thing is really just predictable camouflage for denial of what needs to happen. Deep down we all know what a gordian knot this is.

7.5 billion gallons of fuel requisitioned for FY 2005 by Pentagon just for "Iraq War", almost forgot that one. More will actually be used.

Most of what you are stating and the way it is presented is of a certain technique used to avoid the gravity of the issues we must all face. These are marginalization techniques very common in corporate media channels.

[upi402]

9. excellent points

I have downsized by 65%, sold the small motor stuff and reduced commute fuel consumption by 55%+

I can change me and they can't stop me from using less. The corporate media propaganda organ can't make me use it either.

[northzax]

13. ok, we will cut that in half

no problem. Let's run some numbers of our own, shall we?

The United States uses 20,200,000 barrels of crude Petroleum a day, roughly. (according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency Of course, crude oil makes different amounts of various products, but let's take gasoline. Depending on the grade, a barrel of crude is converted into between 19.4 and 25 gallons of gasoline, so let's take the conservative 19.4. That means that the US uses 392,000,000 gallons of gasoline a day (rounded to the nearest million), although most estimated put it at about 400 million gal/day. In addition, of course, is heating oil (12-13 billion gallons/year)(link:api-ep.api.org/filelibrary/ACF1AC.pdf|source), natural gas (22.5 trillion feet^3/day)(Source, diesel, kerosene and others.

So let's look at the impact of your numbers. The Navy, besides being the world's largest consumer of diesel, as you point out, is also the world's largest consumer of biodiesel, all bases and non-combat vehicles in the navy and marines run on 20% biodiesel. (link:www.biodiesel.org/resources/pressreleases/fle/20050317_Navy_Policy.pdf|Biodiesel.org source]

And the Abrams tank? since only 8800 of them have ever been made, and the US has shipped about 2000 of them to overseas clients (Egypt, for instance, has almost 800) So let's figure the US has 7000. At four miles to the gallon, running 8 hours a day for an entire year (30 miles an hour=7.5 gallons/hour; = 60 gal/day/tank * 365 days/year * 7000 tanks = 153 million gallons a year. remember, that is every tank in the army running 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, for an entire year, worst case scenario. Or, running them full out, less than a third of what the US uses in a day. So eliminate them completely. Add one MPG to the US CAFE standards, and you gain more than by eliminating the US Tank corps entirely. Add 3 MPG, and you eliminate the entire petroleum usage of the US military.

enough numbers. Please lay out the specific steps you would have people take, starting tomorrow, to eliminate 40% of the US energy usage overnight. I'll only ask for five. Remember, all actions have consequences, please take these into account and let us know how we can mitigate them. If you say 'abandon SUVs' tell us how all the SUV drivers will get to work. If you say "eliminate commuting" let us know how people will get to work tomorrow. And where people who can't commute anymore will live. "Take public transit" great idea, but what about people who live in places tht don't have public transit? how do they get to work tomorrow? "use alternative energy" from where? please explain how I can heat my apartment with alternative energy sources tomorrow night, it's going to be cold. This isn't 'twisting the facts' this is recognizing the reality of modern life. It's not going to change overnight, hopefully, it can change over 15 years, but don't you think we should really address what to do for those 15 years?

oh, and your 'overnight' point? do you think it can be done in 5 years? 10 years? how long until we wean ourselves off of oil? I think 15-20 is ambitious, but doable. Shouldn't we recognize the reality of the world until then?

[BrewerJohn]

6. They're not even trying to hide it anymore, are they?

[msongs]

7. exxon declares war on americans - makes a great frame eh? nt

[RB TexLa]

10. Every President since Ford has made this or a similar statement

With present technology oil is the best way to fuel the world. It is sold on an open market of supply and demand. Everyone said that we would get real about conserving fuel and finding alternatives and that the world was coming to an end when it first went over $1 a gallon at the pump. Same thing now, however people really haven't conserved anymore after these various doomsday prices are sustained.

Until we are much, much closer to running out of oil will anything else be invented. The phrase necessity is the mother of invention is a limiting phrase, few things are invented until they are necessary.

[hopeisaplace]

11. Best investment post nuclear war - bicycles.

There's the new form of transportation.
Finally energy independence. Yes. :sarcasm: