Lee Dye of ABC news starts off by saying that our countries increasing dependence on foreign oil is our weak spot that could lead to disaster but alternative energy is too expensive and not cost effective. Researchers from the University of Colombia have found many reasons as to why we can not seem to kick the habit when it comes to oil and one of those reasons are some tax laws made a century ago and that big corporations have billions of dollars invested in oil reserves so they have no reason to switch to alternatives. The tax on oil is basically a tariff which are quite foul in a new world of free trade. It begins to talk about ethanol by stating that it would take too much corn to produce a sufficient amount of ethanol saying that we would need 11 acres to fuel one car with ethanol for 10,000 miles, about someones driving in a year. Chemical engineer Galen Suppes argues that we need the kind of alliance between the industry and the government that Canada had to get the development of their reserves in the tar sands underway.Canada gets one third of their oil from the reserves under northern Alberta which, Suppes says, comes to America for the most part. The article continues to say that switching to hydrogen would just be too complicated and that we may be looking to garbage for our energy.


Are we just too lazy to do anything actually constructive?
What does this tariff on oil do?
Which is more expensive, continuing with our oil habits or seeking out and developing alternatives?


http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=99487&page=1

According to the Washington Post, former CIA director R. Woosley Jr. believes that America purchasing foreign oil is contributing to terrorism. It disagrees with Woosley saying that America's two biggest suppliers of crude oil are Canada and Mexico which are two countries that are not quite known for having terrorist. It also states that the the 9-11 plotters spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 planning and executing the attack so they would not really need all the money spent on foreign oil. There is a new energy bill requiring the U.S. to produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022 but that is a small dent in the 360 billion gallons we consume each year - 200 billion of which is imported. This is trying to say that this will not rid us of our oil dependency. Soybeans would only produce 1.5% of America's oil needs and corn would only provide 6% even if we devoted all our corn crops to producing oil. It implies that we are better off importing oil than going it on our on.


Does the U.S. have an alternative plan then? If so, what?
What happens if the prices of oil keep raising and we keep paying?
What other sources of alternative energy do we have?








http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011002452.html

Natural Resources Defense Council talks about how much it is costing the United States to import oil from other countries. The United States spends about $200,000 a minute and 25 billion per year in the Persian Gulf alone. It states that of the 54 billion dollars debt the U.S. has, 12 billion of it is from imported oil. Our oil consumption is growing and it is projected that we will be consuming 28.3 million barrels a day and other countries will start to compete more with the U.S. for the oil available for export. The world as a whole uses up 12 billion barrels more a year than it finds. With the technology America has, we could save up to 2.5 million barrels a day. China has taken action with this cause and created new fuel economy standards that experts say is better than our own. The article implies that oil is the reason inflation has gone up. The amount of money dished out for oil is passed down to us through higher prices for goods, services, and at the pump.



How much is a barrel?
How much are other countries spending?
What have we done about this aside from raise the prices of everything?
Why is the amount of oil diminishing?





http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/aoilpolicy2.asp