Flashfire does the math

[solarbird]

Briefly, I wanted to point out a post wherein flashfire does the math regarding this State of the Union statement:

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.

Assuming President Bush chose his words specifically and carefully, as is always true for State of the Union addresses, that's actually an extremely small number for 20 years of work—around 1.6Mbpd—and not nearly enough to meet the challenges ahead. He said "more than," so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say 1.8Mbpd. An impressive-sounding statement at first glimpse – but Nixon, as it were, did not go to China after all.

I caught some of the State of the Union last night, but was in the car and distracted for most of it. I may have more comments later; it's on the TiVo.

Comments

[britzkrieg.livejournal.com]

Awesome find! Thanks for sharing.

[banner.livejournal.com]

I personally wish he'd picked a date much closer in, like in say ten years. I was also happy to hear him pushing for nuclear energy. We need a lot more nuclear plants built, so we can stop burning oil and gas for the generation of electricity. That right there would have a massive effect on the amount of oil we import.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

And I think nuclear energy is not as dangerous as a lot of people want everyone to think it is. They act like the next Chernobyl or Seven Mile Island is right around the corner. Yes, the possibility IS there, but the probability is so miniscule that all the fears are basically paranoia.

I just wanted to point out that while it's nice he's actually saying we rely too much on oil, pointing to the Middle East as an area to cut back in imports doesn't tell the whole story. It just seems to me like specifically mentioning the Middle East, especially given the state of things in that region today, is an attempt to make people say, "Oh, hey - he DOES want us to get our fingers out of that cookie jar!"

As it is, only Saudi Arabia is in the top four nations we import oil from, and overall the Middle East isn't as high on the list as a lot of people probably think.

[solarbird]

Three Mile Island. Oddly, I was just looking it up night before last because of a movie.