Welcome to Part Two of our lecture called “The Scarcity Myth.”   Yesterday, we talked a lot about some introductory ideas, the idea that we have a long history of predicting the end of oil and we talked a little bit about how much energy we already have here in the U.S.   If you refer to our podcast or the posting from yesterday, you’ll see that in fact the United States, and indeed the world, has hundreds, if not thousands, of years of oil left.  This leads to a really interesting question “How does oil get created and how could we have so much of it?”   How is it possible that we have an infinite supply of oil?   I will discuss that tomorrow.

Today, I wanted to talk about points three and four of our agenda (please refer to the slides for the agenda).  What do Americans want?   We are told by our politicians that Americans do not want us to go and get the oil that we have, that Americans are happy with the situation the way it is.  Drilling in the U.S. is out of favor.   In fact, 71% of Americans are in favor of increased energy supplies and 75% believe that we should increase our drilling here in the United States immediately.  These numbers are contrary to what you hear on the TV or see in the newspaper.   Most people here in America believe that we should go and get the oil that we have.   71% of Americans support drilling in coastal areas, even with the threat that there could be a spill.  However, let me remind you that in the Prince William Sound in Alaska when the Exxon Valdez crashed, we cleaned it up, and now it is as beautiful as it ever was.   And after Hurricane Katrina went through the Gulf of Mexico, not one of those oil rigs had any spills.  It seems quite clear that coastal drilling is safe.

59% of all Americans support drilling in Alaska’s ANWR region.   We talked yesterday about ANWR.  It’s a small tract of 2000 acres in Alaska that would produce years of gasoline for us and with the Prudhoe Bay experience and the Alaska pipeline experience of the 1970s, we have proven that we can very safely get oil out of Alaska.   75% of Alaskans support drilling in ANWR, which is really a quite overwhelming number.

Moving along to other forms of energy, just to get some perspective.   65% of Americans support building more nuclear power plants.  As we talked about yesterday, not a single person in the Western world, and I’m including Japan, because they use a lot of nuclear power, not a single person has ever died from nuclear power.   Coal causes lots of asthma related deaths or lung.   We certainly have gasoline related deaths every year, but not a single person has died from nuclear power, and 65% of all Americans support building more nuclear plants.  The question is again, “Why do we not do it then?” Because of the environmentalists, who fight every new plant.  There’s that famous expression NIMBY, which stands for “not in my backyard.”  Everyone would support a nuclear power plant as long as it’s thousands of miles away from their home.

71% of Americans support more clean coal power plants right now.   Coal supplies a huge part of our electrical supplies. The new technologies for clean coal, when waste is trapped the emissions buried in the ground, is a really exciting prospect.   The possibility of having super clean coal power plants that provide us the electricity for homes and pretty soon will provide the electricity for our electric cars, such as the Tesla and of course the Chevrolet Volt that are coming out in 2010.

Listen to the Podcast for a long discussion of my views on the environment, and the history of environmental protection.   Also, I allude to my next lecture series, which examines global warming.

Agenda point number 4:  a word about the environment.  Can we drill safely?  Yes, offshore drilling is done safely.  We have had no major spills since 1980.  From offshore drilling there is a .0001% chance of a spill for every well that we have.  For every billion barrels of oil that is transported there are just .73 spills, an infinitesimally small percentage.  And they’re really good at cleaning those up the few spills. Just remember hurricanes Katrina and Rita that ravaging through the Gulf of Mexico.  Two category five hurricanes, back to back, and not a single oil well spill as a result.

Alaska and the ground-based drilling are also done safely.   In 1980 Prudhoe Bay had 5000 caribou.  Today there are 30,000 caribou.  As I said yesterday, I have personally stood on the Alaska pipeline and the animals love it.  It does not harm the animals.  The animals like it because they can scrape up against it and sometimes when it’s really cold they stand underneath it for protection.  Alaskan drilling has been done safely now for the last 30 years and there has only been one major catastrophe and we cleaned it up pretty well.

Here’s the big question:  this is what it really comes down to, would you rather have China or the United States drill for oil?  If you want to do something interesting, Google Beijing Air and see what you come up with.  Or Beijing pollution.   You will see that the air in Beijing is some of the worst in the world.  The Chinese government has not yet endorsed any sort of environmentalism or any sort of environmental protection.  They would drill for oil in a way that would be bad for the environment, but with American safeguards and American technology, we can drill for oil safely and cleanly.  So not only is there the terrorist question, the issue of the tax dollars, the issue of us exporting all of our money overseas to governments and religions that hate us, there’s also the idea that if we were to become energy independent and drill for oil right here in the United States, the world would be a cleaner place.  The environmentalists don’t go to Saudi Arabia and try to get them to stop drilling for oil.  Only here in the United States, which really makes me wonder what their motives are.

Of course, the answer is we should drill for oil here in the United States, where we can do it in an environmentally friendly way.

We are now ready for agenda item 5, and this is probably the most exciting part of this lecture series, but unfortunately we’re going to do it tomorrow.   Agenda item 5 asks if oil really is a fossil fuel or not.  I will summarize some of the scientific research that says in fact oil is not a fossil fuel.   It does not come from decaying dinosaurs and I will explain to you how we actually get it.

 

 Oil Scarcity Part 2 [13:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download