64% Percent of Americans Favor Offshore Drilling
Posted by: Michael S. Kerr | 08/11/2008 2:17 PM
Rasmussen is reporting that roughly two-thirds of Americans support offshore drilling. This promises to be a major issue for voters in November and one that Republicans have been out in front on for months. The Democrats can see the writing on the wall and are coming around on the issue. Why does it take the threat of losing office to motivate commonsense policy?
The breakdown in the numbers between the presidential candidate's supporters is interesting. Ninety percent of likely McCain voters favor drilling and thirty seven percent of Obama supporters want drilling. In other words, most Republicans are on the same page as the vast majority of the electorate.
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Drill Here, Drill Now
It may be ill advised, but it is apparently not "fraudulent" and certainly not election fraud. Forbes has...
This seems to be a little behind the times. Most of the polls I've seen in the last month have indicated support for ANWR and offshore drilling is in the seventies, floating between 73% and (currently) 77%.
This is the only poll I've seen since MAY that had support for drilling below seventy percent.
Angry D.
http://AngryD.livejournal.com
Angry D. These were Rasmussen's number as of yesterday (08/11). The numbers are actually down 3% from the same poll conducted 2 months ago. It would be interesting to look at a combination of all the relevant polling data on this. It's hard to believe that less people are in favor after two more months of getting fleaced.
Elephant;
I'm curious what the error margin is. About the only thing I can think of to account for this anomaly in the data is that people think they're out of the woods because gas in Seattle (for example) was $3.95 at the Shell on 4th today.
Folks, until gas is under $2.00/gallon we are NOT out of the woods. (It's possible. The price spiked to over $5 in the seventies. We haven't had gas lines, either. The big thing is refinery capacity. Oh, and eliminating democrats and their gas taxes. Sheesh, if we got rid of those we'd be around $3.23/gallon RIGHT NOW!)
Angry D.
http://angryd.livejournal.com
Anyone out there in the oil business? During the 1980's anyone associated with the big oil companies, knew we were on short supply. This is not something that America faces for the first time nor the last time: we are going to run out of viable oil. When? Who knows? Ok, so let's drill in ANWR - ok. Wrong. It's not ok.
It is not ok to just drill in ANWR. We have to create the solution to the problem not just hide our heads in the sand and drill for more oil.
This country has choices. We have had alternative energy sources for decades. But they were not part of big business and thus got pushed to the side. Well it's time to fess up, pull out all those non mainstream ideas and get them working - or we will face an enormous problem when one day we wake up and there is no oil. No, let me correct myself, our children will wake up to that scene.
Am I crying wolf? Am I a radical envirnmentalist? No to both questions. For years I drove an alternatively fueled vehicle - loved it, worked ok. Was alot cheaper than gasoline and safer. Moved back to Washington and there was no place to fuel, because our local utility did not want to fuel any vehicle unless it was part of a large (over 100 vehicles) fleet.
Obstacles everywhere. Now we have a one man crusade in T. Boone Pickens. Is that wrong? Should we sign on to his ideas? No it's not wrong because no one else is doing it and you bet we should sign on, because we are not going to get solutions from congress or EPA or DOE.
Congressman Reichert's answer to his vote on not drilling for oil at ANWR is RIGHT: it is not the answer.
Gasoline is a habit (which is really close to an addiction) and as all habits, it's familiar: right or wrong.
There are solutions, there have been solutions, but as with many new ideas people who want the safe reliable solutions to be the only ones, do so because of money, greed, a system, a source that we know what happens economically.
Folks make no mistake about it: oil is money. And the world revolves around oil and money. There actually could be a time where oil is far more precious than gold. The numbers of gallons of refined crude, gasoline, sold in one day is astronomical. Money talks.
We have got to start focusing on solutions that are other than oil. We have got to have people willing to once again, revolt against the system in place and give us the solutions to the problem, not pander to our desires.
And before any of you respond, let me tell you, no one loves to drive their cars or travel by air, more than me. I like big gas guzzling SUV's that have as close to zero emissions as humanly possible. The difference? I know there are alternatives that work because I had one! And was mad that I could not continue to use it when there was no fuel in place for a private individual in WA State.
Hybrids sound great, but they still run on gasoline 90% of the time in our area. Doesn't even qualify for a tax break from Uncle Sam because it is not an alternatively fueled vehicle as defined in any of the environmental/energy laws passed in recent time.
Drilling? Not the long term answer, nor the short term. The automakers have the new and alternative technologies, spent millions of our tax dollars on research, but their dealers didn't want to sell them.
The answer? Demand from the automakers - enough demand and they will produce. It's all in the economics of the game. Nothing more glamorous than money money money.