Originally posted by very sonick:
I have 2 points to this.
a) while i would rather prices not keep getting higher and i would not like paying for farmers to grow more corn than they need, i also dont feel the need to just drill oil til we're blue in the face pretending that its only a temporary solution while people are padding their pockets and screwing the future. Ethanol is a crappy scenario, one that i dont necesaarily agree with Obama on. But i think McCain is only politically motivated on the issue, somerthing that would probably change if he became president.
2) I do care, bede. But since i am not allowed to vote in this country, i do not feel the need to kiss one of these mens' ass. McCain is an old lying wannabe maverick who likes to think he'll take on anyone but only on his way to the top .... which he would achieve next week, then all of those meaningful promises become meaningless. Obama is a young liberal mind perhaps with socialist tendencies (bringing me back to my canadian heritage!). His policies wont work either. so it comes down to this.
the comprimised policies of Obama's look better to me than the comprimised ones of McCain.
but if i had to vote...well....
again, how do you not differentiate between ethanol the product and subsidies supporting the viability of ethanol? we can go back and forth on whether or not mccain said this or that about ethanol, but the facts still remain that he does not support subsidizing ethanol.
as for oil. . .we can keep ignoring what oil we have here (and, not to mention, the benefit of our own environmental regulations), or we can allow other countries (perhaps less friendly to us, and certainly with far weaker environmental regulations) to drill. for over 10 years now, opponents have said it would take 10 years for delivery to have an impact. . .that oil 10 years ago sure would have been helpful earlier this year, no? nevertheless, i also think that we have to figure out how to use less oil- domestically produced oil is simply one step in weaning ourselves off of foreign oil (although, i might add, we would continue to receive oil from countries like canada and mexico). isn't it better to have some additional amount of oil come from domestic sources than our current already small amount?
we do need to figure out new sources of energy. . .but it is simply infeasible, technologically and economically, to do any of that right now, or even in the next 5-7 years. we can follow the pickens plan, and have everyone run on natural gas (and continue to line his pockets), or we can try to move things to electricity (here's the problem- we'll have to build more power plants, and renewables ain't gonna be able to meet that new load). . .or some other form of energy that hasn't been figured out yet. . .
the question, and one of the few differences between obama and mccain on energy, is who do you want funding the research? obama says spend more government money; mccain says, let private interests do it. my take on it all is, i know there are people doing this research, without any government subsidy or funding. . .if they want to spend their money on it already, why should the government using our tax dollar give them more money to do what they are already doing?
