Just got finished writing a 7 page essay for said above topic, scared. We had to explain the risk of Oil Dependency, and the reasons why the alternatives would fail, or why not. I picked why. What do yall think about it?
Oil shale. While it burns more energy to extract now then you get out, we have plenty of coal to power the electrical equipment and to heat the shale to extract the oil. But oil companies don't have a large infrastructure to extract it, and they are making way to much money at 150 dollars a barrel, and politicians are unwilling to slap the hand that feeds them. Pretty much until consumers reach the breaking point, oil companies will keep drinking us dry. They are worse than crack dealers.
Yeah, but if we could engineer solar power plants, to run electric devices to harvest the oil shale, it would be win win..
It's pretty simple, when we use up the rest of the world's oil, we'll still have some. Plain and simple, I'd rather be paying 4.00 a gallon now then have people rioting over no oil in the USA. Just think about it. No offshore drilling? Duhh cause it's a natural resource and since this country doesn't manufacture anything anymore it's all we have left. Natural resources play a big key in war.
The main issue with solar is that producing the REM's that are needed to produce solar panels create more pollution then oil does with carbon emissions. Nuclear, in safe locations with quadruple back ups are the best option for electrical power right now. The only reason the Japanese had issues was because they put their back up generators at ground level, on the ocean, in a tsunami zone.