Alternative Energy Sources and New Technologies :: War Politics Essays

Alternative Energy Sources and New Technologies Oil may not be the main reason for our military action against Iraq, but the Middle East has the majority of the world’s oil. If the politics of that area were reorganized and we had not taken military action, Saddam Husein could have cut off his supply of oil to our country, shooting our prices to outrageous heights. If we could lessen our dependency on such countries for oil, our country would be much better off. When a crisis hits the U.S. or when conflict arises, we are always in a bind because of our dependency on other countries for oil. It raises our prices, and with a slowing sinking economy, the citizens cannot handle high prices. Cars and factories put off many different poisonous gasses into our air. These can make people very sick, cause plants and animals to die, and causes our atmosphere to become hazardous while depleting the O-zone layer. Another problem is oil spillage. About 1,000 barrels of oil seep per day into our ocean waters. About 11,000 barrels of U.S. oil got spilled from tankers from 1980 to 1998. But this doesn't include the barrels that were spilled outside of U.S. waters, which was about another 72,000 barrels. These numbers are simply too, high. They are improving, but still need to be decrease more. Alternative resources can solve so many of our countries problems. Alternative resources would cause our politicians to be less worried about an oil crisis because of our relations with other countries, but also it would simply decrease our fuel consumption to be saved for later uses, and drastically help clean our environment such as our air, land, and water. As I mentioned before, we have serious political conflict between countries that are major oil exporters and ourselves. These countries have the power to raise and lower our prices by simply be disturbing the relationship between their nation and ours. In addition, because these countries are not always ready to give us the oil we need, we must conserve our oil. In our reserves alone, we have only 599.3 million bbl. (bbl) of oil stored beneath Texas and in the Louisiana Gulf Coast. This is only enough to cover the supply coming from Iraq for 6 months. We need to save it incase of an extreme emergency.