Energy - The Problem

So, I was initially going to do this in one post, but the issue is so big and there is so much to discuss, that I think I'm going to do it in multiple sections.

The problem is as follows (at least as far as I am concerned)

1. The Culture of the United States is too oil-dependent. Everything from rubber to plastic is made from oil or oil derivatives. Many people don't consider how much oil they are really using. Even when buying a car, one must take into consideration the amount of oil that it takes not only to run the car, but to produce the materials, to transport them, assemble the car, to transport it, and to disassemble it.

2. Most of the oil the US uses is imported. Economics is driving foreign policy right now, and the ability of nations to withold their oil, or to impose taxes, etc. gives them a disproprtionate amount of power on the world stage. Although some of our oil comes from friendly countries, such as Canada and Mexico, others come from unfriendly countries such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Middle eastern countries.

3. The US Government subsidizes oil usage in the United States. Because of the subsidies in the form (mostly) of tax breaks, the government is inadvertently perpetuating the use of oil over other technologies. When actual cost (including extraction, transportation, technology costs, and environmental impact costs without government subsidies) are compared, wind power is the cheapest to produce, transport, develop, and has the lowest environmental impact, relative to its net energy.

But, because the government reduces the cost of gasoline to the consumer, people don't bother to look at actual cost, and it becomes the cheapest and most effficient to the consumer. Because people have failed to use other types of energy, most companies who attemt to develop and use alternate energies fail or abandon their attempts in favor of petrol-based products.

4. Producing and burning oil and oil-derivative products damages the environment. Extracting it is incredibly hard on the environment. Although technology has gotten better, and many regulations have become laws, the technology still impacts the environments and many restoration laws are ignored. Burning oil adds carbon dioxide to the air, and in turn, compounds the warming of the globe. Although many other factors contribute to global warming, burning oil is (in my mind) undeniably contributing to the problem.

5. Oil is a non-renewable resource. And the US only holds 3% of it (as a generally accepted statistic).

Although there are many other factors that play into the development of an oil-based economy, and problems surrounding such a dependence, I would argue that these are the main ones. The problem manifested