Would $200 Oil Help Spur Development?

This is my reply to this post by Pilgrim at Say Anything Blog saved here for posterity:

I don’t think $200 will do it. Today there is no replacement! (I am sick of the BP commercial that talks about the “alternatives”—alternatives just can’t replace substantial amounts of fossil fuels—with the exception of Nuclear) There is nothing as transportable, controllable, reliable, quickly refillable, or affordable (yes, I did all able’s on purpose).



The sheer volume of oil used each day is staggering and the more electronic devices we get the more we will use.



We can conserve and supplement, but we can’t replace or conserve enough.

Battery technology is not there today. It may be in 5 or 10 years, but not today and $200 oil won’t change that. You can’t recharge a 350 mile battery in 5 minutes and I can fill my car and pee in that time! (Someone could invent an electric car with exchangeable battery racks that you can change out at the Mobil station—slide in and out with a push, you don’t own the battery, you just use the power—but it has to be cheap enough, safe enough and have long enough life. Hell, I have never had one of my laptops with a decent battery that didn’t need an expensive replacement way too often! With this system you wouldn't have to worry about it. The charging station can discard - for reconditioning or recycle - any bad batteries. Eliminates the cost to the car eliminates that unknown about batter replacement! The batteries could be owned by a separate company and paid a fee for every use since - licensed to the recharging companies.)





What the government needs to do is get out of the way, stop subsidizing political options (ethanol anyone?) that sap real innovation and let the American free market solve the problem. All of the government efforts over the past 30 years have done nothing compared to what the past 5 years of the markets have done.



Worried about global warming? Start a company that puts solar units on every home in America by selling carbon credits (and maintaining them because they aren’t free forever)—why hasn’t Gore’s carbon company done this—because you would actually have to do something not just plant a friggin tree. BUT let the rest of us drill for the oil we need to fuel freedom.



DKK