When the Founding Fathers of America declared its independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so dependent on foreign countries before oil gushed from a well in Titusville, marking the beginning of the global oil economy.
For how long will America depend on foreign countries for oil?
The US is literally sitting on a massive energy source this is because one quarter of the world’s coal reserves are located within the nation’s borders.
The US generated 3,940 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2004, with more than half of the electricity coming from coal-fired power stations.
President Obama is not even the first president to promise that America will not rely anymore on countries of the Middle East to get oil. President George W Bush said the US was “addicted to oil” which threatens to undermine future economic growth, in one of his state of the union address.
Former President Bush said “I hope to move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past”.
While president barrack Obama said, “The days of Washington dragging its heels are over and it will be my Administration’s policy to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”
In a move seen to bring a ray of hope to Americans on the oil issue, Speaking from the White House, the President on Monday announced that he was directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider an application by California and 13 other states to set stricter limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks, opening the way for tighter fuel efficiency standards nationwide.
Obama has an ambition of directing the Department of Transportation to issue guidelines that will ensure the U.S. auto fleet reaches an average fuel economy of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 at the latest; therefore, the directives signal Obama’s willingness to take on America’s disastrous auto sector, which is bleeding money even as it contributes heavily to climate change and the country’s addiction to foreign oil.
What America should do to get its oil?
- The government must first become independent of oil. It means giving drivers a choice between oil and other fuels.
- Ending oil dependence will require political leadership; the changes required to end oil dependence are far-reaching. Many current proposals are far too small. For the big change needed to solve this problem, presidential leadership is essential.
- A keen analysis of the various policy and technology alternatives; plug-In-Cars, Biofuels, Fuel Efficiency, Coal, have effectively no impact on the transportation fleet in the short or immediate term unless more electric vehicles are invented.
Although the White House sees ethanol meeting up to 30% of the nation’s fuel use, it admits that it will take around 15 years to switch the nation’s cars to new technologies.
The forecast of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that this figure will exceed 5,840TWh by 2030, with coal still being the dominant player. But coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels.
To tackle the environmental impact of burning coal, the president has earmarked a further $281m (£158m) for research into clean coal technology. With all these in mind it remains to be seen whether America will find its own oil.
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Resources here (scroll past transcript): www.pinkyshow.org Hawaii is the 50th state of the USA, right? (Well, actually “no”…) Pinky zooms through 500 years of the history of imperialism in order to explain why the US has worked so hard to obscure the truth about Hawaii.
@ 13:02 , Alaska was a colony? Wasn’t it purchased from the Russians?
Just because you know a factoid about a name that was incorrectly assigned at first doesn’t mean you can assume that it’s offensive. Lots of misnomers are valid. Even the anti-Indian-mascots website says that the term “Indian” is not offensive, but just that Indians cannot be used as mascots because they’re people. “American Indian” is also a current legal term and there are American Indian museums. Please stop agreeing with people based on shallow judgment. Do your research.
No, the vast majority of Native Americans or American Indians do NOT consider this term offensive. Again you’re talking about the etymology as if it matters. Most Native Americans really don’t give a rats ass over “Indian” or “Native American”, any broad terms to lump them together with other tribes that they don’t belong to. There are a lot of words that were formed out of some mistake. It’s not something you DECIDE on. The term “Indian” is NOT widely considered offensive.
…No human being can be free and happy when oppressing others. V.Lenin’s quote is very truthful (no matter what do you think on him as a ruler, as a philosophist, he was number one (or maybe two after K.Marx who was the number one))
And even a lot of people in the imperialist countries aren’t happy and rich. That countries always have pyramidal structure of the society with the few rich on the top. Average property is very big in that countries but due to the asymetric distribution, only a few people have average or more. And also, where is imperialism there is war, where is war, there are “traitors” where are “traitors” there are wich-hunts… No – No nation can be free when oppression other nation…
@freshram
“The most powerful countries now and the great empires of the past are built on imperialism.” Yes,but their happines is paid by the blood of milions oppressed people in another countries who are seen by that imperialist as less valuable.I wouldn’t like to be a nazi even if I would be able to live in a gold house.The true freedom is freedom for all the people. It’s basicaly a collective and international stage. “Can be a nation free when oppressing other nation?No, it cannot.” V.I.Lenin
@MLSUSA
. And about that degradatory term for Native Americans I fully agree with you. Education system need to be fixed. To be fully public and free from kindergarten to university. The education should be humanistic and equalitarian. Long live the communism and the cats! Meow! Meow!
I would love to have a communist cat as a teacher
@JerryRSun
“Indian” is a word made out of a mistake. It’s from the word “India”, but American-natives live in America. They didn’t called themselves “Indians” before European-natives came there and they hate the term “Indian” by the vast majority. On the other side Jews always called themselves “Jews”, didn’t they? And they accept this term by a vast majority. Your comparison is absurd.
u need a lot of backround information. You should research this stuff. It took me a couple years of study before i realized how this their system worked.
If you'll email me your address, I'll mail you a shirt.
Because Jews own the banks banks control the money.
Who's the moron who said there is a large Jewish population in the US, less than 5% of this nation identify themselves as Jewish. There are more Filipinos in this nation than Jews why don't we pander to the Filipino vote
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In politics, a chief of staff is the primary aide to a political leader or position.
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest-ranking member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a senior aide to the President.
The duties of the White House Chief of Staff vary greatly from one administration to another. However, he/she is responsible for overseeing the actions of the White House staff, managing the President's schedule, and deciding who is allowed to meet with the President. Because of these duties, the Chief of Staff has at various times been dubbed "The Gatekeeper" and "The co-President".
Any country is passing from democracy to comunism. Socialist presidents are beeing elected but any of them is ending with democracy. Chávez was reelected president of Venezuela in a world-wide recognized election. Including the United States recognized the Venezuelan election as beeing democratic. And is too soon to say that Latin America is turning to socialism, those leaders were elected only a few years ago, many presidents in Latin America are still right-wing. 10 years ago almost all presidents of Latin America were from the right-wing. Things change, today is the socialist wave, tomorrow may be another wave. And the US don't has the moral right to care about Latin America, why do you care so much with us? Leave us alone. Anti-Americanism is the main fuel of leftism in Latin America.
The Republicans are the conservatives. The Democrats are the liberals. Actually about 40% of the electorate here considers themselves Independent and these are the voters who will decide the election. Some states do not require you to declare a party affiliation. In those states all registered voters can vote for any candidate of either party. Some states have "closed primaries" which means you must be a registered Republican or Democrat and you can only vote for the slate of candidates in the party of your registry. The "closed primary" states have this rule supposedly because some voters of another party would deliberately try to get a weak candidate of another party to win the primary.
Because the vast majority of Yahoo answers participants are American. When there aren't enough questions about foreign politics, more American politics questions appear.
elephant- republican party
donkey- democratic party