I don't disagree Bows, but I have seen cases where the best made plans are blocked by these bunny-hugging folks and the "un-attached" as you say, in the name of some butterfly that might have the opportunity to fornicate on some plant that could very well be restored on a nearby habitat and not get in the way of good, clean expansion of the infrastructure. And they are the ones that will bitch the loudest about the prices getting hiked. You CANNOT have your cake and eat it too, reality doesn't work that way. H#ll, there are groups out there that will bash fossil fuels to high heaven and when a clean solution gets proposed, they are complaining about the location of the turbines or solar grid or how the turbines will affect bird flight patterns and such and then cry when their electricity costs more because it has to be supplied by the Canadian grid. It is my personal belief that oil extracted from the Bakken should be processed on the Bakken, why transport that stuff anywhere as raw crude? Refine it right at the source and ship products to the customers. Besides minimal gas taxes, there is another huge reason gas prices are low in the south, that is where all the refineries are, they do not pay the high costs of shipping fuel all the way across the country. Imagine what gas prices could be in the northern tier states if they had a refinery right on the Bakken. Brand new high-efficiency, technologically advanced refinery with minimal transport costs to a half dozen or more states near the site of extraction, it's almost a no-brainer. You don't hear any talk of that, just pipelines and safer train cars. The do the 750,000 residents of North Dakota oppose a refinery in the middle of nowhere, or is it someone else?
You could call me one of these bunny hugging folks, at least with regards to our fossil fuel dependency. Most people who are of this stance (and are actually knowledgable about it) don't so much want to eliminate fossil fuel use immediately as they want to make sure that the groundwork is laid to change the current infrastructure of our energy supply. We've got about 40 more years of oil left, so unless we develop our renewable infrastructure, we'll have to use coal after that. Coal is the dirtiest fuel that we have, not just as far as the CO2 output and it's part in climate change, but it also creates the most other nasty stuff. So, big picture, I think that expanding OTHER parts of the energy sector is MUCH more important, and logical, than the fossil fuel portion.
That being said, I think that gas is the way to go for the next 10-20 years, as it can potentially be a nice bridge between dirtier fossils, and renewables.
You hit on a lot of great points, or actually, large faults within our energy (and agricultural) systems.
1. Our system is INCREDIBLY inefficient. You use fuel to pump (or grow) the stuff, then you have to use fuel to haul it to storage, then it has to get hauled to the final destination (consumer). How many extra steps, and synthetic inputs are there?!? Do we really think that we'll be able to maintain that inefficient of a system? How do we change that? To say that much of the technology isn't there, is just a plain lie. We just have to realize that we're going to have to pay to institute this infrastructure.
2. NIMB (Not-In-My-Backyard). This is a huge problem, for everything! While 75% of the fracking frackus is junk, there are real issues there. I would say that most of these are dwarfed in comparison to those of the unmaintained oil pipelines. I was in Kalamazoo when the Enbridge line broke. Granted, that's the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history, but the damage was, for lack of a better word, incredible. Enbridge still hasn't gotten it cleaned up. I think that A LOT of the money in the system should be going to maintaining the pipelines already in use. Imagine the ecological, and economical, devastation that would be inflicted if it happened in Lake Michigan. I digress... back to NIMB. This goes with having your cake and eating it too...A lot of people aren't realizing that they are going to make short term sacrifices for long term change. This is, in general, a human flaw, and not necessarily specific to people concerned with the environment. When people have higher electricity bills, they complain about the price, rather than realizing that maybe they should use less electricity. Then if prices drop, they are still saving money. I want to reduce my gas bill, so do I complain about my car when it is more efficient but has less power? In general, we can't expect our behavior to be able to stay constant without negative effects. We live in a dynamic system, so banking static behavior is great for short term stability, but is pretty much the worst strategy long term. We have to realize that to get change, we need to sacrifice/change our own habits.
