Mixing politics, oil and customer service
I just received a surprising email from a professor friend in California.
Hi Charlie — well, this is a first. I’m on hold with Delta Skymiles, and in addition to the usual ABBA soundtrack, I get a nice little political message that says Congress “must” enact legislation banning oil speculating and promoting domestic drilling due to the “fragile” state of the airline industry.
Left or right, I have to say this is the first time I’ve ever been propagandized by an airline while waiting to spend my money….
That’s the first time I have heard about politics becoming part of the “hold music” while waiting for customer service. What might be coming next on these customer service announcements from these corporations that are so adept at dipping into the public funding trough?
It is nice to see that Delta’s political announcement seems to cut towards both the Democrats with the call for a ban on oil speculation and towards the Republicans with the push for more domestic drilling.
Many of us received a pleading letter from the airlines asking for support for the anti-oil-speculation bill. Chris Elliott in this blog wrote about the supreme irony represented by airline executives making this plea. His translations of the open letter expose more than a concern for the nation.
The fat executive bonuses that we’ve paid ourselves over the years are threatened. We don’t care about air service to your pitiful little communities. The only pain we really care about is that we can’t afford that third home in the Virgin Islands. This pain can be alleviated by you.
Besides, the battle in Washington over excessive speculation seems to be boiling down to Wall Street vs. the Airlines. That translates to those who know how to make money vs. those who have almost all gone bankrupt. I sure hope that Wall Street wins this legislative battle.
It is interesting that economic experts claim this bill will only make matters worse. Or that restricting speculation might restrict well-run, viable airlines from participating in the speculation through futures contracts.
This clamor for restrictions on oil speculation is emotional and misdirected. This is a wish for a silver bullet or a magic wand. It is a move to, once again, avoid making politically painful changes. It doesn’t hold water when examining the evidence.
According to the Economist: Speculators do play an important role in setting the price of oil and other raw materials. But they do so based on their expectations of future trends in supply and demand, not on whims. If they had somehow managed to push prices to unjustified heights, then demand would contract, leaving unsold pools of oil.
Here’s my political message: Now, what about more domestic drilling? What about nuclear energy? What about wind power? What about solar and thermal power?
These are all real tested efforts that can add to our national energy production. It is time that Congress wakes up and starts to put Americans first — ahead of the caribou in Alaska and the seagulls soaring over Nantucket Sound.
Drilling is an American opportunity and new safeguards make it far more environmentally friendly than when current drilling bans were enacted.
I really can’t understand the reluctance to wind, solar and nuclear. Somehow “green” Europe is moving rapidly into alternative energy and building nuclear power plants to beat the band. While here at home we are standing still complaining that the price of our oil is going up.
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“These are all real tested efforts that can add to our national energy production. It is time that Congress wakes up and starts to put Americans first — ahead of the caribou in Alaska and the seagulls soaring over Nantucket Sound. Somehow “green” Europe is moving rapidly into alternative energy and building nuclear power plants to beat the band. ”
I fail to see the logic in this passage of yours. Is the lack of logic intentional?
One of the reasons some of the European countries (and for that matter, most of the developed world) is investing in alternative (non-petroleum) forms of energy is to protect the environment. And you know as well as I know that by protecting our environment, we are protecting those who live in it, including Americans.
I changed the final paragraph to state my position more clearly.
Thanks for mentioning it.
Although there are still many, the caribou in Alaska have already been more than decimated by humans in competition for their land. And they were here first. What? Only humans have the right to exist? Once those caribou go, it’s only a matter of time till we do too.
Solar energy is not enthusiastically pursued bacause no one has figured out how to make a bundle off of harnessing it. It’s much harder to own and commercially control the sun’s rays than to own and control an oil field.
Surely someone can become obscenely rich by manufacturing and selling solar energy converters. Once universally installed, we may even begin to find an empty hotel room in Wyoming (mostly reserved for the gas and oil drillers.)
Let’s be realistic about this, drilling is only a short term fix for the world market. A market that we will be competing with everyone else, including those who hold a good chunk of treasury notes. According to most estimates if we drill in ANWAR, off the coasts of California and Florida and all of these fields come in close to the estimated amount of oil, we are looking at reducing the amount of oil imported into the USA by about 5% for a period of 10 to 15 years. This is based on the assumption that usage or demand remains flat. The other number to bear in mind is that it will take between 7 and 10 years to get these fields producing. So starting in 2015 we will see a 5% drop in the amount of oil imported, that will mean what at the pump? Not much, if anything, because odds are that oil will be sold on the world market to the highest bidder.
If you think of oil in terms of whale oil in the 1800s and how all the lights were fueled by it and how good we Americans were at hunting whales for their oil and then think about what happened to the whales and the whalers. Black gold is the same sort of product. It is finite and we are coming to the point that we need to start developing the next source of fuel. Hopefully this time we can do one that is renewable, sustainable and isn’t as damaging to the environment.
T Boone Pickens has offered up one plan to help us make the switch and others have offered up the electrification plan whereby we switch to electric powered cars and trains with the electricity generated by breeder reactors, wind and solar. Regardless of which plan one picks there are issues however these are smaller and easier issues to deal with now, than they will be in 30 years when we won’t be able to afford a barrel of oil.
Unfortunately, we forgot the lessons of 25 years ago when we had our first big oil crisis.
Oil became very cheap in the late 90s, early 2000s and we bought big vehicles and big houses. There was no incentive to invest in alternative energy research when oil was $20 per barrel. Now many wish they had better fuel economy or more reliable train/transit service to get to work.
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