Real long term problems with election day answers

Another band-aide on a gashing wound:

Barack Obama, unveiling a broad energy plan, said he supports tapping the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drive down gasoline prices in the short term. Republicans responded by criticizing the Democratic presidential contender’s apparent shift in position — and poking fun at another of his proposals to save gas: having drivers fully inflate their car tires.

During the Democratic primary, Sen. Obama argued against releasing oil from the strategic reserves, in contrast with then-rival Sen. Hillary Clinton’s support for such a move. He has reiterated that position during the general election campaign against Republican Sen. John McCain.

Sen. Obama, speaking in Lansing on Monday, urged the government to sell 70 million barrels of oil from its stockpiles, suggesting that gas prices could fall within two weeks. He pledged funding to support long-term work on hybrid cars and pushed for the development of renewable energy sources.

Another Obama flip-flop and this time in the wrong direction.  For a country that uses 20.7 million barrels a day and 70 million barrel release from the strategic reserves would amount to, well almost nothing.  Let’s face it; the oil companies are not looking for the general relief of the public, what they are looking for is the highest sustainable price that they can charge without damaging the long term economy of the country.  Even on that note the only reason they care about the long term is in the form of long term profits.  Any short term plan such as releasing oil from the national strategic reserve (which, by the way, is there for a reason) or the creation of a “tax holiday” will only cause the oil companies to come up with something new to push prices to the level they see as optimum.

The only way to break this cycle of dependency is new technology.  Granted there is going to be an interim that needs to be filled with oil until new technology is created and shorter term prospects need to be examined such as off shore drilling, oil shoals, and exploration into existing oil fields, but 1 and 2 month fixes wont solve anything except lowering government revenue and depleting the national reserve while something new will come around to push prices back up. 

My issues with Obama’s plan are that he isn’t expanding on proven, current, reliable technology such as nuclear energy and that his proposal of investing money into new technology promotes the possibility that that technology won’t be created until the investment money runs out.  McCain’s policy is to fill the interim with domestic oil production, increase the use of current technology, and reward companies for coming up with new ideas expeditiously.  McCain’s plan does, however, have one flaw.  His reward money is focused on batteries, what it should be focused on is overall alternative energy technology.  This would allow companies competing for the prize to focus in multiple areas instead of just batteries.