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closeThe two Goliaths
It seems we are between a rock (oil) and a hard place (nuclear generation), and they both leave us cold.
Regarding Wayne Madsen’s Voices commentary, “Nuclear energy is neither green nor renewable” (July 19): He stated all the reasons this country (and the rest of the world) should not proceed, promote or depend on nuclear energy production: safety, terrorism, exorbitant expense, waste disposal ($90 billion for Yucca Mountain if and when it is licensed), security for the waste for 100,000 years that it is radioactive and nuclear proliferation.
We’ve all experienced the high cost of oil, from filling our gas tanks to the war in Iraq to environmental pollution. After reading an alarming article regarding the sunken tanker six miles off our coast with 3 million gallons of oil in its 60-year-old, rusting hull, this brings the two Goliaths together. Diablo Canyon and the threat of a major oil spill—add in the terrorist (or lunatic) attack or earthquake, and we have the ingredients for a tragedy that would shake us to our core.
Writing or calling our representatives here and in Monterey County and stating our concern and call to action to this ticking time bomb would be the first step in sopping up the goo before it is upon us.
Marty Brown
Atascadero
Who really oils us
Regarding the commentary by Carl Hiaasen (July 23): Why does The Tribune keep printing articles by supposed experts that keep referring to the United States’ “dependence on foreign oil,” implying that we are in the grasp of the Middle East oil producers? In Hiaasen’s words, “There’s not enough oil down there (offshore drilling) to free the U. S. from its crippling dependence on Mideast reserves.”
Here are the facts: According to the Energy Information Agency ( www.eia.doe.gov), our country supplied 41 percent of the oil we consumed in March of this year. Canada accounts for 12 percent of our nation’s oil and 20 percent of all the oil we import. The rest of the top five include Saudi Arabia (7 percent and 13 percent); Venezuela (6 percent and 11 percent); Nigeria (6 percent and 10 percent); and Mexico (5 percent and 8 percent). How much oil do we import from Persian Gulf countries? I’m glad you
asked. Persian Gulf countries accounted for only 16 percent of our foreign oil imports each year from 2005 to 2007. In fact, our Persian Gulf imports declined most of this decade, from a 15- year high of a little more than 1 billion barrels in 2001 to 791.9 million barrels in 2007.
Please try to be “fair and balanced.”
Craig Kincaid
San Luis Obispo
Use the sun
Instead of the Bush administration giving huge subsidies to the oil and gas corporations at a time when they have made more profits than any other in world history, why not use that money as well as a windfall profit tax on those corporations to give subsidies to home owners for installing solar power? We have enough sun in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, etc., that we should never need electric or gas utilities. Wouldn’t that be money well spent?
And why is Bush insisting on drilling in ANWR and off shore when the oil companies already have drilling permits on public lands that they have not yet used? Do you think they are just trying to take advantage of this gasoline crisis driven by stock market speculators to frighten the public into allowing further destruction of the environment? Does anyone smell a rat?
We have to get off our addiction to petroleum.
Barbara Caton
Avila Beach
Kids need gas, too
Gas prices affect everyone, even children too. Children have less activity because of gas; I know, because I’m only 9 years old.
Woods Humane Society has less people looking at the animals. The children’s librarian has noticed fewer kids at the library this summer.
People have less money to spend on food. More and more stores are going out of business. Summer jobs for kids are horrible.
It’s sad to watch a Great Depression start again.
Karly Bonzi
San Luis Obispo
Last years of cheap oil
In response to Elaine Townsend’s letter (July 27) stating that she feels $8 per gallon gas would be better than $4 per gallon gas because, “It reduces traffic, reduces speed, reduces air pollution and reduces our weight,” I would suggest she try to convince the millions of middle-and lower-income families who are barely able to survive because they are now paying $4 per gallon that $8 per gallon would be better. Also, for the vast majority of us it is not practical to ride a bicycle to work, and we can’t afford a scooter because we spend too much on gas, food and housing. That is reality.
Having said that, I do believe that we are living during the last few years of easily accessible, abundant, cheap oil and as a consequence of that, coupled with our past habitual and wasteful overconsumption, we are indeed in the midst of monumental environmental, economic, political, social and cultural problems. We obviously need to use less energy while seeking alternatives.
I think we need to recognize the very real hardships that this incredibly daunting, complicated and ongoing problem poses to the majority of the population and realize that we cannot conveniently and cavalierly dismiss, ignore and deny these obvious realities.
Tim Sanford
Grover Beach
Where’s Iraq’s oil?
It seems very strange to me that people can’t understand why our gasoline is costing us so much nowadays. Let’s rationalize the issue by asking a question: Where are we buying the oil that is costing so much? Answer: OPEC countries that are in mostly Muslim-run sections of the world.
Take care of Paso
The Paso Robles Police Department is down five or six officers. There is a hiring freeze within city government. Janitorial services for the public buildings (library, city hall, police department, etc.) have been cut from five days a week to two days a week. Now I read in The Tribune on Aug. 5 that Paso Robles wants to spend $400,000 on a “Hey, look how wonderful this city is” campaign.
The mind reels at this nonsense. Take care of this city and its needs, councilmen. Take care of the residents. That’s what you were elected to do. We don’t need glossy ads in slick magazines. We need you to take care of Paso Robles.
Marvin Cowley
Paso Robles
And who are we in a war with? Any questions?
Why aren’t we being offered some of the oil from Iraq since we have spent billions of dollars in their country?
Hal Holzinger
Creston
Huasna oil questions
I was one of about 300 concerned persons attending the meeting on July 31, at the South County Regional Center in regards to an Australian oil firm’s intentions of drilling for oil in the Huasna area. While I appreciate the need for oil, this meeting raised more questions than it answered.
Since neither the residents of the Huasna area nor the city of Arroyo Grande, through which the oil tankers will be traversing, were notified of this intent—my questions now are:
1. Why didn’t the county Planning Department or our elected representatives notify residents in the Huasna area, Arroyo Grande city officials and residents of Arroyo Grande along the proposed route?
2. Why hasn’t the county considered more carefully the option they have of taking the oil directly out to Highway 166 either by truck or pipeline (only four miles from drill site to highway)?
3. Why the haste to approve this project? Why not give all affected residents of the South County the opportunity to evaluate the long-range effects of this project so we can be assured that all options and safeguards have been covered?
Raymond Fuhrmann
Arroyo Grande
Can’t drill our way out
We Americans are smarter than our government leaders give us credit for. We all know that we cannot solve the energy crisis and certainly not the climate crisis by drilling for more oil.
Big Oil, their cronies in Congress and the Bush administration are exploiting the pain we are feeling at the pump by touting drilling as a solution even though they know drilling will not lower prices at the pump.
Big Oil wants you to believe that drilling is a quick fix, when the reality is that Bush’s own Energy Department has said that any new drilling will have no effect on gas prices now and an “insignificant” effect on gas prices 15 to 20 years from now.
The U. S. uses 25 percent of the world’s oil supply but holds only 2.6 percent of the world’s oil reserves. No matter how much we drill, we could never provide consumers with real relief.
Rather than being fed the false claim that drilling will lower gas prices, Americans need real choices, like cars with better fuel efficiency, tax incentives for riding mass transit and telecommuting and consumer rebates funded by repealing billions in tax breaks for Big Oil.
Join me in telling our government leaders that we want real, sustainable solutions to our energy and climate crisis.
Elaine Genasci
San Luis Obispo
Court protects oil
“Cleaning up ships’ fuel” (Aug. 5) brings to mind a related concern of mine. Perhaps before we get too committed to drilling off-shore or in fragile areas for our petroleum, we should take into account the protection with which the Supreme Court shelters and reimburses victims of an oil spill.
Take for example, the recent decision by the court on the Exxon Valdez catastrophe by reducing a lower court’s punitive damage award of $2.5 billion to $500 million. This reduced damage comes to $8,000 compensation to each person who lost 20 years of income due to the disaster. Even the full amount of the lower court judgment would have been a very, very modest amount, and only about one fifth of Exxon’s last quarter’s profits — or two weeks of those quarterly profits. Seemingly, the Supreme Court has become a lobbyist for rapacious giant enterprises and appears to side with powerful moneyed interest at the expense of us small fries.
Paragraph five points out how federal courts have thrown out other California protective policies. Although the next paragraph points out that California may set higher standards than the federal government, nevertheless, it sounds like a regulation the majority Supreme Court would squelch gleefully.
Greg Stone
Cambria
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