Thursday, June 26, 2008

The environmental cost of banning oil exploration

H/T Mark. Apparently, the cost of shipping a container across the oceans from Shanghai to New York has risen from $3000 to $8000 per container, indicating that to take 10-20 tons of container and goods about 20,000 miles, it requires about 1000-2000 gallons (about 4 to 8 tons) of diesel fuel. I would assume that the numbers are similar for petroleum; to get a gallon of gas here from the Middle East, you'd burn somewhere between a quart and a gallon of diesel fuel.

If Democrats truly value the environment and want to reduce carbon emissions, maybe they ought to reconsider their opposition to domestic oil exploration along the coasts and in ANWR. They might also do well to reconsider opposition to nuclear power.

Both parties might also do well to abandon the NAFTA and GATT "free trade" frauds (both treaties are tens of thousand of pages long and have nothing to do with real free trade a la Bastiat) and adopt a revenue tariff of about 10%. Shouldn't trade pay the expenses of keeping the sea lanes free--costs for ports, the Navy, and the Coast Guard? It's for the polar bears, after all.

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