Common Misconceptions of Americans, Part I

In this series of posts, I am going to identify some common misconceptions of my fellow Americans and try to respond to them in a civil manner with plain English. Some of these are global issues, some aren’t. Some are happy and some are sad. I originally had plans to put a bunch into one post, but changed my mind because my fingers are so long-winded that it’d take ages to write and consequently read the whole thing. This is part one in a four or five or so part series. We’ll deal with the big money issue of oil this time around. If you’ve got a topic you’d like me to make cracks about, let me know in the comments or via email.

$2.00 per gallon of gas is too high

(and the subpoint that we should open up Alaska for drilling)

If you think $2.00 per gallon of gas is high, than you should look around the world. In Europe, gas prices are three to four times as high. That’s right. Here in the Netherlands, one should expect to pay at least $6.00 per gallon of gasoline. So be happy with paying $2.00 per gallon, please.

Now, let’s say for the sake of argumentation that $2.00 per gallon is too high. Yeah, I agree, it’s a lot of money. There’s a few things we can do about this. An obvious solution is to drill for oil on American soil. So where’s American oil? Alaska.

That’s right, Alaska has large oil reserves. There’s this place in Alaska called ANWR that’s tiny. We could drill for oil there. Yes this land is protected, but that’s ok, we need the oil. So we open up ANWR for drilling. So, how much oil can we get out of ANWR? Now we’ve stumbled across a problem. You see, this ANWR place is really far north in Alaska. In fact, so far that only 5.2 billion barrels of oil from ANWR can “economically” be extracted. The economically part is there because the rest of the oil is so far down, that it would cost more to extract the stuff than it could be sold for. Keep in mind we import 700,000 barrels of oil a day from Iraq. Even more, according to the World Energy Council us Americans use 14,804,000 barrels of oil per day. At this rate, that oil wouldn’t last long. In fact, less than one year.

Ok ok… so you say, it’s worth it. We’d “put money in our own back pocket,” to quote Interior Secretary Gale Norton. I mean, even our own Vice President has realized the need to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. He says it’s “foolish in the extreme” not to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I couldn’t agree more. Except the cheap oil in Alaska will run out in less than a year, so we’ll be right back to importing oil from Iraq, Iran and those terrorists that hate Amercans and everything we stand for.

Alright, how else can we reduce our dependence on oil? Wyoming’s own Dick Cheney says it’s foolish not to, so we better figure out how we’re going to do it. Sen. Barbara Boxer says, “In seven years, we could save the same amount of oil available in the Arctic Refuge by requiring light trucks and SUVs to meet the same efficiency standards as regular cars.” Smart lady. If we use less oil, than we won’t have to buy as much from the terrorists that want to kill us and we can protect all the beautiful bears, mountains and birds in Alaska! Cheers!

I’ve got an idea. We leave Alaska alone… for now. Let’s wait ten, twenty years and see what happens. Tom Daschle said the ANWR issue is about protecting the environment. He’s wrong. Someday, we are definitely going to open ANWR up to drilling. As a tree hugger, this pains me greatly. But it’s foolish in the extreme to doubt it. The world’s oil reserves are finite, so we’ll use them all, someday.

Here’s the point. Let’s stop looking at only the short term. Politicians want oil prices to drop during their 4, 8, or 12 years in office so they can look good and get re-elected. Let’s think about the long term for a change. Let’s save the oil in Alaska for 20 years. Then it will really be worth something. Oil prices are only going to rise. In 20 years, that oil will be worth more than it is now. We’re capitalists, we see the value of that. It’s like holding on to a stock that you have one chance to sell. You don’t sell the family jewels when you’re buying cheap jewels from Arabs. You hold on to them as long as possible. Let’s do the same with the oil in ANWR.

Alright what happens if we develop some alternative fuel source in the next 20 or so years? Well, the value of the ANWR oil reserves drops dramatically. Yeah, our stock plummets. But that’s ok. We can feel good about ourselves because we saved one of the few places left on Earth that man hasn’t trampled. We’re America and we kick ass because we have saved a chunk of land bigger than some of those old European countries from the evils of man, yeah!

Seriously though, we’re getting cheap oil from the middle east. Let’s keep abusing that as long as possible. We “liberated” a country with vast oil reserves after all, let’s abuse that and the rest of the middle east indefinitely, while keeping in mind the only real way to solve the problem is to lessen our dependence on oil. The world’s oil reserves are only getting smaller, they will run out someday (potentially someday soon). Let’s make them last as long as possible, so that oil up there in Alaska can really be worth something.