Originally Posted by Pig Love
Wow, what a thread.
8 pages and not one person has mentioned "peak oil", which is
the only REAL issue our world faces. I'm not surprised though,
our political heroes don't mention it either.
There is one single "real issue." The most important one will be jobs and the economy. Conservatives hope that it will be all about Birth Control and not funding it as well as citizens' concerns about debt to GDP ratios and the left hopes that this election will be about citizens carrying less about how poorly their lives are going and will instead focus on how they can make the very rich to be less rich through taxation. Both sides' hobby horse ideas are fairly unimportant to the independents, who will vote their pocket book, as they do in almost every State and National election. Most Americans, especially middle income people, in middle American states, which will decide this election, care about if they have a job and if their adult children have jobs and if they have job security and if they have a chance at getting a better paying job.
I really do believe that political pundits, comfortably ensconced in Washington and New York, making far more money than the average middle class American, whose kids have college degrees and no jobs or at least no good jobs. The pundits make enough money that they need not worry about soaring gas prices or how inflation in food and fuel is squeezing the already strained family budgets of most Americans.
Political pundits of the left have tried to redefine a good economy to fit the agenda of their president. They have, with straight faces, called 8.3% unemployment "good news" and they have even touted the DOW Jones' relative highs as proof of even more good economic news, it is odd because during the forth year of the Bush presidency, 6.5 % unemployment was called catastrophe and when ever stock prices were high during the Bush years it was proof that the rich were getting richer that the DOW Jones did not effect working class people.
I am not singling out left wing pundits, too many well off conservative pundits and beltway elites fantasize that not only will abortion and gay marriage drive the 2012 election but that their antediluvian stances on both will someone matter more to independents in Ohio and Florida as more or more so than the fact that their home is underwater and they work a temp job, that pays half of what they made in 2008. In 1992, James Carville hit the nail on the head with "It's the Economy, Stupid." Unfortunately for President Obama, It still is.
As far as peak oil is concerned, one should be very concerned about the next hundred years because if you take a peek at Shale and other previously economically nonviable sources, it is clear that peak oil is not coming any time soon. Like Julian Simon said, the human mind is the ultimate natural resource and with innovation, conservation, economization hitherto dwindling sources of mineral wealth become greater as sources that were once commercially nonviable become very viable and even at current rates of petroleum consumption, there may be several centuries worth of petroleum. In theory, oil is a none renewable resource but that does not mean that technology and prices (their ability to encourage to consume less of it when the prices spikes as well as incentives for oil producers to under take very expensive exploration and be able to supply a production whose price is very high) will create a situation where consumption declines as well as potential supplies increase as more and more known reserves are being found.
A combination of improved technique in turning fossil fuels into energy (find a way for cars to get 100 miles per gallon), with better means to reduce noxious byproducts (find a way to sequester or to use CO2 emissions) and along with greater efforts to conserve and maximize the effect of our energy usage (better insulation and electronic devices that do not go into zombie mode, just to two name a pair of conservation measures), it may well be thousands of years before crude oil supplies really begins to dwindle and by that time I believe that solar and nuclear fusion technology will be far enough along with make fossil fuels obsolete, with the next century or two).