What would you propose as an alternative to domestic flight?

Rent the movie “the Big Bus” it is the story of a nuclear powered bus doing a transcontinental trip. Go Greyhound and leave the nuking to us.

The airline industry agrees that we don’t need as many planes since they are planning to cut 6000 seats the next holiday season. The passengers might disagree. It always amazes me how people can decide what I need and what I don’t. Why ask the paying public what it wants when we have people willing to save us all from ourselves at our expense.

Super trains.

Knowing WHAT is not the same as knowing HOW.

Which is sad. Pelosi needs to go. Her refusal to allow a vote on certain bills is ludacris. She deserves her job less than any of the others in the House (and I don't think any of them really deserve their jobs). She needs to go.



Yet another proposal for an alternative that there is no infrastructure for. Once again you cannot cease a current techonology/resource without providing a viable alternative to it immediately. you can't stop oil production/consumption without a viable alternative, or alternatives, to pick up the slack and you can't shut down the airline industry until you have some form of mass transit available to pick up the slack.

Good one.

Balloons! In all seriousness, you keep holding onto the status quo; no one's arguing that oil is currently the bases of all our energy needs, but stop with the devil's avocate--we doneed alternatives and the sooner the better.

Yes, so why didn't we listen to Carter?--and Nixon, for that matter.

Oh, you've been ashamed of me many times before, Mr. Ostensibly Moderate.  

I don't think anyone is arguing that we don't need alternatives as soon as possible, only that we don't have any alternatives that are available at the moment and due to that we need to increase oil production to lessen our dependence on foreign oil until the alternatives are ready.

That's not too much of an issue atm though (if the goal is to switch from oil to renewables); let's say that the technology for electric airplanes or planes running off some alternative (potentially renewable) energy is still years away. There're still plenty of other areas where oil is used for which renewable energy could be used, with cars and home energy use (heating, appliances, etc.) being obvious examples. If all of the areas where you could use renewable energy were switched to renewables from oil, then you've got a massive reduction in oil consumption. So it's not so much an issue of whether it would be possible to have a massive switch to renewables, but more whether it would be affordable (i.e. what's the difference between the cost of renewable energy and energy from oil).



You contradict yourself here. The higher the price of oil, the bigger the incentives for alternative energy, since the less costly they become relative to oil (e.g. let's say it costs $2 for a unit of oil energy and $3 for a unit of renewable (non-oil) energy. If the price of oil doubles to $4 per unit, renewables will be taken up, since a firm wouldn't be maximising their profits by failing to. Hence, if offshore drilling would not bring down the cost of oil/energy in general as you claim, then it's not going to affect the incentives for renewables. Of course the point is fairly moot since due to the simple laws of supply+demand if the supply is increased, the price will fall, all else equal (while even if prices rise due to say increased demand from the likes of China, the resulting prices will still be lower than if you hadn't had that increase in supply).

Edit: Forgot at the time of posting this thread was 5 pages long. Sorry if I've repeated things already covered in those 5 pages (

Excellent point! People forget that "oil" as an energy source has only been around for about 150 years. (I am not talking whale blubber). A mere blink in the eye of the world.

This is a lie put up by big oil. we can get rid or oil all together and the products that is made from oil we can use plastic instead.

Yes, I laughed at that one too. The staunch environmentalist that made that comment I just repeated truly had no idea that plastic is an oil byproduct. When I asked if he ever passed 9th grade science he wanted to know why I was belittling him. You be the judge.



Dr. what a great point! Thanks. We can get rid of that finite oil we pump out of the ground and replace it with whale oil! It is renewable! It is cleaner burning! It is better for the environment! We can use sail boats to hunt the whales saving the world from the pollution of nasty big oil with diesel powered boats. We can have whale farms and grow our own whales and dispatch them humanely. How many whales does it take to gas up?

Oil is here to stay; we just wish ironically and illogically there was less of it.