Sustainability

I do not wish to cause any flame wars about left or right wing politics.
Hi, I'm a freshman student at a High School.This post is an experiment to see how people would react to an idea.It's rather long so if you hate long drawn out explanations click away now.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about politics and how the world works. In capitalism, the people can only be prosperous if the economy keeps growing. Of course this gave me an immediate realization that this is a big flaw because the world's size and resources are limited.The world pop. recently reached 7 billion.While the demand grows the supply will begin to shrink. I started thinking of ways to fix this but there was no existing economic plan I knew about that would be sustainable. I looked to examples in nature to find an answer and it hit me that ant colonies are very similar to socialist and communist structures. The amazing thing was that they worked perfectly.No one starved and they never seemed to be able to be stamped out.Now I asked myself why it is that ants can create a sustainable society.My answer was simple.They show absolute and unquestionable loyalty to one leader,the queen.Also, ants are much smaller in size so there resources are virtually unlimited.There are also colonies that even feed their waste and dead back to the the plants they feed from.A form of recycling.I concluded that this would never work for humans because they can not follow one leader. I began exploring each issue one by one to hopefully solve this inevitable issue in a mind game.Most of these would require a high degree of control and order.The following ideas in this post might be naive from more experienced adults point of view so please forgive me.
#First I believe humanity has to advance technologically speaking.Capitalism would be fine if we could travel to other planets and stars and harvest their resources but currently I don't see any way that would be possible.At the pace humans are consuming the planets resources we are bound to have a war or pandemic over the reaming resources before we can even reach the next star.Of course this is all purely speculation.A battery needs to be developed to solve our transportation issue.We need to develop a way to produce oil artificially in reasonable amounts.I'm expecting two questions right now. One, why bother developing a battery when we will produce oil and two is it even possible to produce enough oil for the whole world.One answer answers both questions.I wouldn't plan to produce so much oil as to keep to combustion industry running except for maybe air travel, but just enough to produce plastics and other synthetic materials that are extremely important.Secondly the oil we would produce wouldn't be crude but have exactly all the right hydrocarbons we need so no loss in refinement.
#The first issue I wanted to tackle was the population.Originally I believed this wouldn't become an issue because once every country in the world would become as expensive as the Western nations,most couples would only have 2 children anyways.But then I remembered how there will/must always be poor people/countries.Once every nation would reach said economy one nation would collapse.When that happens the population of that country will began producing more then 2 children again,but this time not starting from a few million like in the Industrial Revolution but in some countries a couple hundred million.Now when most people hear population control they think baby killers or sci-fi movies where everyone's death is planned.I wanted to approach this in a way that wouldn't require that.First I would implement a 2 child policy.The first of ways to enforce this would be a one time fine or simply the cost of the extra child.Another way would be through culture and I'll get to that later.Now most of you are probably asking about what happens to twins or triplets,etc.You can always expect years where disease,disasters,or other factors reduce the pop. more than planned.Some humans may not even be able to or want to have offspring and the twins and triplets would offset this.Another important regulation is when they could have children.The world is getting older and there is not enough care takers and money to take care of our elders.If you time when you have children, you can incorporate your future care takers,your children.Lets say we set the time to 30 years of age.By the time your children will have children you will be 55.If age for the timed care for your parents is 70 then your children will be 40 when you begin to be taken care of by your children.This system will require more refinement because not everyone dies at the same time.
#The second issue is how to enforce regulations and keep crime low.One interesting way would be something similar to brainwashing,or in other words tradition and culture.Japan's population density is 9.9 times greater then the United States(the pop. density was taken from infoplease.com) yet Japan's intentional murder rate, according to UNDOC numbers posted on wikipedia.org,is 12 times higher.I believe this is strongly correlated to Japans culture.If you could create a culture where the people will simply live in peace then it'll will be much easier to create a sustainable economy.
#Money?-A big issue is whether or not to even keep a monetary system.If people would comply by getting a certain weight of food a day or week this would dramatically increase efficiency as most westerners tend to throw away half of their food anyways.We could implement a standard system like every household(parents and children and later the parent's parents)get 1500 sq meters of living space and a certain amount of land.If all we did was distribute all the land equally each person would have 5.25 acres.This does not include land needed for industry, those living in cities,and the fact that this is for EACH person.
#Food Production-The plan in this case would be to have one giant automated system that plants,fertilizes,harvests, and waters all the crops.Meat production would be reduced because only ten percent of the energy available to the animals from crops would to converted to meat.So that means if we have 10 tons of corn we could only get about 1 ton of meat.A big waste of resources and meat has the annoying tendency to rot, whereas plants like grain or corn can be stored for much longer.
#Standardization- A big factor in eating up our resources are consumer products.There are many brands of electronics,cars,clothes,etc. but it's usually quite obvious which brand everyone wants.From my experience everyone either wants an iPhone or a galaxy.It would be much easier to agree on one standard and then produce only that.Some of you might say that we would no longer have good products any more because we wouldn't have competition.If you don't need to develop and build thousand of different fabs. and factories, you could save massive resources and space.Not only would everyone know how to use the device because its standard,but parts being obsolete or no longer having support would be a thing of the past.Everyone files would be compatible and this again would increase effectiveness. The lack of diversity wouldn't matter because there would still be tons of people updating and improving the device.It would almost be like one massive open source device.
#Energy Production-This will basically have been solved with the population control.The great thing about having a stagnant pop. means that you can plan to an extreme degree because you no longer need to worry about growth.All that would remain is to decentralize power to maximize efficiency and convert to renewables and bio-gas power plants.
#Cheap labor-this would be solved by machines.It would ensure everyone can get food.You would have machines fix other machines.To keep material prices low the majority of the materials would be recycled.This leaves me with one question though.What are the other 7 billion people there for then?Sure we can occupy a few by letting them teach future generations,improving products,designing new machines,letting them do intellectual jobs,care taking,doctors,but with all the manual labor taken away I could easily see humankind becoming fat with nothing to do.Maybe you guys could suggest some ideas.
Anyways I've been talking enough.There is still so much more I could add.I would to know your thoughts on a sustainable economy.Maybe even suggest a name for it.

 

Malthus was wrong. So are the rest of you who think that overpopulation is a real problem. It is not. In the 1960s, they thought that 5 billion people on earth would cause mass starvation and diseases. They were wrong. In 2013, at almost 7 billion people, we have a lower percentage of starvation than we had in 1960 at 3 billion.

The Japanese suicide rate is higher than the combined U.S. murder and suicide rate. Japan has a pressure cooker society that causes people to die rather than continue living in it. No thank you for Japanese style living.

I wish I were still 18 and knew everything better than anybody else. Then again, when I was 18 I wasn't a controlling fascist. See my sig.

 

President Obama could cure the energy problem with a swipe of his pen in an Executive order mandating flex-fuel natural gas vehicles be used in all federal vehicles. No need to try to develop synthetic oil/gas. NG is abundant. We just don't have the infrastructure to deliver it and use it. This is where government could really do something to help US but.....Instead we get all these pie in the sky completely idiotic proposals like use our edible crops for fuel. Energy could be delivered cleanly and efficiently to every home using nuclear plants yet, our EPA won't allow it.

Overpopulation is a scare tactic to get people to do things they would normally consider immoral.....Like aborting a perfectly viable developing human life. Look at China, they are overpopulated to the max but right now they are kicking our collective a$$e$.

Ants have tiny brains if any at all. They (like most insects) operate by pre-programmed instinct. Males (Drones) are only kept alive to mate with the queen then they die. The colony is almost exclusively matriarchal, all the females (which is all the individuals except for a few drones) are sterile and live and die at the whim of the queen.
You say ants are a lot like Socialists and Communists...I guess you're right.

Capitalism isn't about harvesting resources, it is about free individuals, working in their own best interest within the law toward their own happiness using a monetary system to not only measure one's success but to be able to obtain goods and services from other free individuals working within the law toward their own happiness. There is no 'queen' needed to tell anyone what to do.

Life isn't fair and not all of us are born the same. The best we can hope for is to be able to pursue our own happiness within a societal structure that thwarts a takeover by a 'queen' governmental entity trying to micromanage and equal-outcome society.

You just can't control human beings, all you can really do is appeal to their natural sense of freedom and liberty. There will be winners and there will be losers and you will most likely fall into either category at one time or the other. I think people should stop trying to tell everyone else what to do and concentrate on seeking their own happiness with a good moral foundation and within the law.

 

I never meant to controlling facistI'm neither a nationalist nor do I want to control every aspect of people's lives..I simply mean to find a sustainable economy.I already knew the thing about Malthus.Overpopulation isn't problem food-wise but space-wise.I know technology will allow us to sustain the population and grow further but some people aren't going to be happy with an 100sq ft. apartment.About Japan I didn't know that but maybe the high population density has something to do with with the high suicide rate.All the more reason to watch the population.Also the NG is a great idea and was thinking the same thing, but even if you lengthen the hydrocarbons in NG we wouldn't have enough for synthetics which is my primary concern.

 

From an ecological perspective this is a very good point. Human desire is basically infinite while supply - especially that portion of it possible for people to access right now - is strictly finite. Even colloquially described "renewable" sources of supply like sunlight, wind, fertile soil, sea tides, geothermal heat, and so forth are technically finite as well - they just take quite awhile longer to deplete than most of the resources human beings are accustomed to exploiting. It carries over to fossil fuels where, even though people are well aware that naturally occurring supplies will eventually be exhausted, that in no way deters them from continuing - increasing, even - consumption in the present as well as the foreseeable future.

Capitalism invites us to focus on today and the short-term future - on living it up while we still can - and when the boom phase inevitably goes bust everyone scrambles to cope as best they can and eventually starts the cycle anew, not unlike an addict returning to their fix in spite of the wretched lows they experience between hits. Perhaps that is not the most fair and faithful of metaphors I could have used but nonetheless, it is far from being an idyllic system when it comes to intergenerational concerns. That is not to say capitalists could not adjust their system to make it more environmentally responsible (e.g. "New Liberalism" proponents in Canada); it is just that most have apparently not chosen to do so yet.

It can be a bit tricky to draw good parallels to other species without making some pretty big generalizations but ya, there are many kinds of insects that are highly collectivist. They work superbly as a team for the greater good.

A related concept is that of corporatism - one of the key components of fascist ideologies. A society can be structured in such a way that organizations are like parts of a great body that is the whole of a country. Each individual is like a cell. It is specialized, perhaps to some extent unique, and must be nurtured and kept healthy by other cells for the good of the body but at the same time is only really useful insofar as it contributes to the great critter's success - i.e. the individual should serve to help their nation thrive and survive and has no rights without first committing to do their duties. Individual animals coordinating to act like a single unit may be referred to as a superorganism.

Whereas the liberal has traditionally focused on individual rights and freedoms while the socialist has oft leaned more toward equality and social justice, the corporatist stands out as something strange when considered in the context of right vs. left politics - offering us a third way, if you will - for they're most concerned with the competitiveness and survival of the nation as a whole. Corporatism does not imply fascism though, mind you. It to some degree influences mainstream liberalism (e.g. progressivism, solidarism), socialism (e.g. syndicalism, trade unionism), social democracy (e.g. tripartism, collaborative markets), branches of conservative thought (e.g. reflected in nativism, some "patriotic" attitudes, a desire for cultural and/or ethnic purity), and so on. It is not necessarily a good or bad thing all on its own.

In terms of providing a fairly relatable example, I'd suggest the U.S. under FDR during World War II, or Japan today.

Ya - the most direct, straightforward paths to solutions in politics tend to make authoritarian measures seem attractive. For better or worse, the established government in the U.S. was designed to place a lot more emphasis on quality of process than on quality of results. That does not stop people involved in politics from thinking differently but does, in practice, make a mindset of victory at any cost more difficult to embrace in an extreme way than I think we would see if there were fewer checks and balances and/or less separation of powers in our system. Being a liberal myself, I err toward the quality of process side of the coin and am willing to put up with some pretty disappointing, irrational, or otherwise disagreeable choices being made by the government. There are both pros and cons to doing things that way.

As for being naive, don't worry about that. We all start there and many never stop being that way. There's nothing wrong with it so long as you keep an open mind, and incorporate new ideas and insights from others into the way you see the world. My values have not changed over the years for the most part but by the time I got out of college I'd shifted over from one ideology to another at least three or four times. xD

This is a very real and serious possibility for the future of our species. Technology affects the carrying capacity of an environment. That is to say, new tools and strategies can help us extract, process, and utilize resources in such a way as to support a greater number of folks on the same amount of land as before. But how fast will technology develop? What kinds of possibilities will it unlock? Will it be enough to make our economic paradigm sustainable for a great many generations? Are there any technological boundaries we will never be able to surpass and - in either case - how will that impact our ways of life? Personally, I reckon it is dangerously ignorant, wishful thinking to simply offer the whole dilemma up to market forces to solve. Without some degree of government involvement, generations yet to be born could easily end up pretty royally screwed due to the carelessness and misaligned priorities of people living today.

Or maybe things will be just fine and the market forces will, in fact, suffice. The future remains unknown. It is to be expected that not everyone weighs or responds to the perceived risk in the same way.

This is also an area where better technology is needed if we are to make wind and solar energy serious alternatives to coal and nuclear fission for generating electricity. We may only need to artificially produce oil for fabricating synthetic materials if sunlight, planetary heat, wind, water tides, nuclear fusion, nuclear fission of thorium, etc. can supply enough electricity to support widespread use of totally electric vehicles. Likewise, advances in the area of electrical production may someday allow affordable, large-scale desalinization of sea water. Overuse of fresh, drinkable water supplies is already causing some problems for folks and threatens to become a major sustainability-related concern in the future.

I reckon it is almost certainly possible to produce enough oil artificially. The more pressing matter might be whether producing fuels that way will be cheaper and less environmentally detrimental in the long-run than going down the path of emphasizing high-tech batteries and relatively clean sources of energy. The answer is elusive to me, though perhaps some other folks here might know more about it and be able to offer a more substantial response.

I suspect from your post that you have been made familiar with the concept of demographic transition, which would suggest that the pattern you mentioned will eventually lead to a crest of human population and then slow decline for an untold period of time. Where I most strongly feel compelled to respond with respectful disagreement is in your assertion that nations must collapse and then return to higher rates of fertility again. I do not think growth is necessarily a zero-sum game, and with the right steps taken in the direction of human development there may well come a day when the entire world is affluent and post-industrial by modern standards. Making that process as smooth and moral as possible is among the reasons I favor global government. Many other schools of thought address human development though, of course, and many disagree with my generally social democratic outlook on international affairs.

I think I know where you're going with this, and prefer to go the cultural route. There's nothing offensive about your other plan, however, and I would support it if proposed by leaders in government. Population expansion in the U.S. strikes me as being a somewhat bad thing right now.

This part bothers me a little more but it is more of a values dispute so I am not going to argue your proposal is irrational. Life expectancy is still expected to rise and technological progress could make care-taking for young children and/or the elderly less burdensome, or in the case of seniors even empower them to live independently for much longer than before. Whatever plans get made may have to be changed mid-course if those profoundly lifestyle-affecting changes eventually occur.

Though I agree in principle that social engineering can have beneficial outcomes, we might want to aim for a culture and social mores that are less stressful and repressive of individualism than what one tends to find in much of East Asia. This is a matter I am in a poor position to tackle due to ideology. The kinds of communitarian policies you appear to have in mind strike a fairly evenhanded balance betwixt individualism and collectivism, and liberalism and authoritarianism. I lean strongly enough to one side on each of those scales that I can't bring myself to directly impress such views onto others without violating my conscience, so in practice the best alternative I can find is to want young people thoroughly educated on political matters - sustainability included - and hope that they chose to make the choices I believe are right without meddling in the process to bias them in favor of my views.

The Soviets briefly tried to ditch their monetary system roughly a century ago and it did not take long for their central planners to encounter some very serious problems that convinced them to switch back to using money. Perhaps technological advancements will at some point make it possible to do away with currency, but for now I'm betting against it. An authoritarian or fully totalitarian system would be best poised to implement the other suggestions provided, but (aside from there being other ways of implementing the policies) in practice I honestly do not know whether it would work out well. I will not deny that there is some latent potential there for achieving the gains you've got in mind.

Also, depending on the affordability of energy and raw building materials, you might be able to give people much more living space by tunneling down into the ground and building towers up into the sky. We are not strictly limited to two-dimensional allocation of space.

You may want to find a way to introduce incentives into such an industry for exemplary labor, intra-organizational competition, and an otherwise highly pro-innovation business culture, lest you run the risk of the agricultural monopoly eventually becoming stagnant, inefficient, or at worst quite thoroughly corrupted. Maintaining a good work ethic is hard regardless of the economic system but I think an industry like that you are describing - especially if it interacts a lot with, and works in concert with the efforts of politicians and economic planners - could succumb to serious problems that tend to occur in corporatism. Monopolies, firms operating in very safe business environments, and vast government bureaucracies seem to encounter many of the same problems in this regard.

It is a brilliant way to increase efficiency so long as the system still allows for plenty of creativity in modifying, improving upon, and eventually replacing the widely-accepted standards in place. One example I know of where standardization worked out very well for awhile was the French nuclear industry. There were fewer delays, less red tape, easier maintenance, lesser costs, and so on when all the reactors got built from a single design.

If the stagnant population does not already exceed the land's carrying capacity, yes. Otherwise there will be a need for a greater, cheaper supply of energy with which to manipulate water, soil, metals, discarded materials suitable for salvage, and so on to prolong the number of centuries or even millenia that excessive population can endure before having to rely on off-world imports for survival. Many communities have already far exceeded such limits and may be reluctant to move away to live on relatively underutilized lands to improve the efficiency of humanity's resource consumption.

This is also the long-term plan of most communists. Preferably individuals - then completely free of all forms of coercion - would be able to pursue self actualization to the fullest and most satisfying of extents. People would do what makes them happy, which I suppose would mean accumulating much better educations than most folks have today, getting a lot more involved in their communities, devoting more time and energy to their relationships, spending more time on creative pursuits in the arts, indulging in hobbies and many material comforts, getting more in touch with themselves spiritually if that's something they are really into, and such. People could also still work of course - though it would be totally on their terms and an ultimately fun thing to do rather than being seen as a mundane chore of sorts that is merely a means to more desirable ends. I think the kind of automation you speak of is the missing key to achieving a communist utopia, though it would also demand abolition of the state.

I am not sure how to describe your plan since some of the key details are being left out. To offer you a label I need to know what kind of government you've got in mind for pulling these changes off, whether businesses are owned by private investors, their workers, or the state, and to what extent businesses and the government team up to solve social problems. Do you think class hierarchies are good, bad, or something else? Should we eventually eliminate all private (but not necessarily personal) property? The environmental-related concerns are not enough on their own to give me a clear picture of what kind of politics you are immersed in!

My plan used to be rather similar to yours, though it's changed a lot over the years. I might come back to discuss my alternative at a later time. For now I've been typing here for long enough! Great post, Enutriet! It's always good to find new, insightfully started threads that really make me think hard about something important.

 

Yeah, it is unfortunate really. NG would be a much cleaner fuel to use than oil. Also, I must add that the crop-conversion schemes have really turned into pandering. Going against the concept of ethanol derived from corn, for example, can upset key constituencies early on in the Presidential primaries and it is not at all difficult for such a change in position to be spun as a candidate being anti-tradition, anti-family, anti-small business, xenophilic, or otherwise of dubious political character. It's one of those issues where if politicians were less corrupt or at least more principled, virtually nobody would be taking that source of fuel seriously in a matter of a few months or years.

In regards to nuclear energy, it also does not help that a lot of Americans are afraid of it and have an adamantly NIMBY attitude toward both the plants and waste storage sites. Nuclear energy also suffers from having to compete against coal, which does not really have to pay for all the cleanup of its pollutants and thereby enjoys a skewed advantage over nuclear in terms of cost and perceived efficiency, and I also get the impression that it is a bit hard to get private investments because a lot of the costs incurred by a nuclear power station are borne up-front and are very capital-intensive, with the station then paying for itself and then delivering profit many years later - perhaps not even until the twilight years of its service life. It might actually be one of the few sectors of an economy that are better off getting run by the state or publicly-backed organizations rather than left to free enterprise.

Regulation is an issue too of course, as is the long backlog in orders for certain components that can only currently be fabricated at one site in Japan, so far as I am aware. Or maybe that snippet is out of date? I honestly do not recall.

Though in fairness, China's overpopulation problem came after years of the state nudging families rather assertively to have as many children as they could while discouraging the use of contraceptives, and then failing to reverse course on its policies until it was way too late to avert disaster. My own concern is not so much that overpopulation dooms us to catastrophe so much as that a large population plus rising material standards of living - especially in the developing world - will cause a lot of problems if technology does not keep up with demand. Humanity is not yet prepared to have seven billion people trying to live at our own standards of living in the States.

Slowing or stalling outright the growth in population buys us time to get better tools to prepare us for the future, which I consider the cautious and responsible thing to do in lieu of being able to know well in advance exactly how many people the Earth is going to have on it and how we are going to have enough to go around that they do not die from want or become compelled to slaughter one another in major conflicts over control of coveted, increasingly scarce resources. I am mostly optimistic about the future yet consider society's outlook on consumption today as extremely reckless, selfish, and nearsighted. I do not blame markets for that - just the instance of many people to adhere to traditional attitudes that have long outlived their usefulness to humanity.

And unfortunately, individuals often make decisions that are detrimental to other individuals. This is why we have the law. Do we have no laws at all, have intense regulation of all facets of the individual's life, or strike a compromise somewhere in-between? While I agree that a lot of the OP's suggestions are too controlling - at least for my tastes - restricting a bit of the individual's autonomy in the name of environmental preservation and good stewardship of resources is not in itself either a bad thing or incompatible with the essence of what makes capitalism useful to humanity. The question becomes to what extent we should regulate what aspects of the system, to which our answers will differ based on our moral values, views of the world around us, and the biasing genetic parameters and influences of past experiences that appear to have a heavy hand in sculpting those things.

I agree with you on a personal level but do not agree that it is objectively the best option. To some extent we are both making certain faith-based assumptions here on which to build our respective rationalizations. To many other rational people what we consider best is not (or is even considered the worst) from out of the available, seemingly viable options to consider.

 

You've never driven through the rural south, midwest or southwest obviously. There is plenty of room in the U.S. If we went to Germany's population density (228 per square kilometer), our country would be capable of at least 6 times the population we have. (we are currently at about 34 per square kilometer). Germany isn't extremely crowded, but uses it's space wisely. There is a lot of open space in Germany.

 

This is what we get when the powerful elite decide they 'know what's best' for US. It is not politics it is tyranny really. Why doesn't Obama write an executive order to mandate that federal vehicles run on NG? Right away large car manufacturers would start tooling up and eventually those cars would become affordable and as ubiquitous as gasoline powered cars. In fact they can be made to run on both! Flex-fuel vehicles. We are all suffering the hardships of exorbitant fuel costs, a stupid war with 16th century-like people who are all rich because we are PAYING them!!! Just one little executive order....and he won't do it.

A lot of Americans are just ignorant too. They get more radiation from open slag piles and burning of coal.

Ref...Scientific American...." Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste. By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

??

Typical Socialist created problem in the first place trying to be solved by yet another ludicrous Socialist policy. The very definition futility at the least and tyranny at the worst.

You do more harm trying to micro manage society. Life is reckless and each individual has to figure out how to tame it. Consumption will only be possible when there is something to consume. It is better to let the market decide. People like to be able to control things because they are afraid. It is always a bad idea.

Utopian policies are Socialist and will fail 100%. The best way for everyone is to promote individual freedom and liberty under a Constitutional mandate that has the underpinning of a generally agreed upon moral code. No one tells anyone how many children they can have or not have, leave it alone.

People are mostly conservative when it comes to preservation of land and resources. We don't need an over-arching Federal department to mandate State restrictions on how We The People use the land. It is not their job to mandate. It is their job to present information so We The People can decide. Don't get me started on the Forest Service. They are letting our forests burn.

I put my faith in human beings who are working lawfully to provide for their own well-being. Government is needed but should always be kept in internal debate so We The People can decide.

 

No, you need to understand the government procurement process....A mandate that all Federal government cars run on natural gas is not forcing car manufacturers to make flex-fuel cars. The Federal government typically offers contracts for the stuff it needs to be built and the manufacturers bid for those contracts.

 

Yes, the President could order the CNG conversion of the 449,000 federal nontactical vehicles and the construction of 4 CNG refueling stations in each congressional district plus one CNG refueling station each 100 miles of Interstate. Cost: less than $3 billion which would be repaid by the $1.61 lower cost of CNG than gasoline.

 

If we converted 28% of our vehicles to natural gas we could stop all oil imports from OPEC. After 40 years of being jerked around by OPEC, it would be very satisfying.

 

We cannot bring peace to the Middle East. We cannot force Afghanistan to become a democracy. Let us do something we can do. Stop buying oil from OPEC. We can do it now. Compressed natural gas (CNG) cars. Iran does it. So can we.

Today, four decades after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, we actually have the capability to stop all oil imports from OPEC within 60 months. We can go from 3.1 million barrels per day ($112 billion per year) from OPEC down to zero. The beauty of the program is that it will save more money than it will cost and will significantly reduce CO2 emissions. The program would convert 71 million vehicles (28% of our fleet) to compressed natural gas (CNG) or an average of 39,000 conversions per day for 60 months. The other part of the program is to build 10,000 CNG refueling stations. The cost of the conversions will be about $178 billion and the cost of the refueling stations will be about $10 billion for a total program cost of $188 billion. It would be financed by no-interest loans from the government. The total program itself can be totally financed by $17 billion per year from a $15 per barrel (36 cents per gallon) import tariff on OPEC oil. In the later months of the program, the refueling stations will be sold and loans for the CNG conversion subsidies will start being repaid. These loans would be repaid by the $1.61 per gallon savings ($39 billion per year after 2 ½ years into the program) from the use of low cost natural gas. All the costs will be spent on U.S. labor and equipment. The annual savings will result in direct reductions to our trade deficit.

 

The cost of an executive order.....close to $0. Why doesn't the environmental movement insist Obama do this? Answer: There's no $$$ in it for them.

 

Ok while I definitely agree that NG is a wonderful idea,most people don't see hidden costs. When people go out and buy hybrids they feel good inside but they don't realize the energy they save and C02 they're not emitting won't be equivalent to all the energy used to produce that car.Now if you use the NG concept as a means to stay independent from OPEC then yes its perfect.But anyways that wasn't the idea of this thread.It was meant to find ideas for a sustainable economy so if you post please stay on topic.