Drilling for oil today is not the answer we need to solve our energy crisis. If we are able to invest money into the development of new technology we could have a clean environment. Not only would we be green but we would be able to stop our reliance on foreign oil. This could improve our national security and allow us to spend money in other areas that need help. During the depression the government invested in the national park service to provide jobs to the public, if the government were to invest in green technology we could provide jobs to people and help jump start the economy. If we were to drill for off shore oil if would take time to retrieve the oil then transport it and refine it. In the time it would take and money spent to do all this we could be that much closer to a cleaner renewable resource. We all know that eventually we are going to run out of oil and in the past we have develop technology out of necessity, so now is definitely the time to invest in the future and improve our well being all around.

In reading Energy Myths and a Brief History of Energy I was not really sure what to think about the statements that he has made. He says that one of the myths is that there is not enough fuel in the ground to last hundreds of years. Now maybe it will not last us hundreds of years but there are still significant pockets of fuel under the surface. The reason people do not talk about them is because they are more expensive to extract then the fuel that we are pulling out of the ground right now. Canada has a huge deposit of oil under it and the Middle East still has much more fuel to extract. The reason we do not pull the oil out of the ground in Canada is because the price of oil has not reached a high enough cost for it to be cost effective. Once oil reaches a certain price then it will be cost effective to extract that oil. He also says that greenhouse gas and global warming are not bad things. Maybe not in a traditional scientific sense because it will mean the rearranging of weather patterns and things will just change and the earth will balance it self out again. But the effect it would have on society and the global economy would be huge. Countries that once had a secure food supply may no longer have that and we have seen the issues that have developed from lack of food or food security. Entire civilizations could be destroyed. The last thing that kind of bothered me was that he said that we do not need to conserve energy because energy can not be destroyed it is just altered. This is true but in a way it is kind of splitting hairs. He says that we need to conserve fuel not energy. Most people are not going to know, realize, or really care about the deference all they need to know is that they need to use less energy to help prevent a major crisis. "Conserve energy" has just been a phrase that the media has coined and it has worked for the most part. Do we really need to make that distinction is it really that important to bring that up and try and teach people a different idea? People understand that energy is what makes the world go around and that fossil fuels are the main force behind that, so they know that its fuel they have to conserve not energy. It just seems a little pointless to really have to make that distinction.