Monday, October 24, 2016


Energy at it Finest……Maybe
By: Jordan Fitting
BACKGROUND: Energy is essential to our everyday lives. Anything you can think of requires energy, our cellphones, computers, fans, televisions, and most anything else. These are all things we use daily. Apart from these mainstream energy sources there are also some technological energy sources around the world. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has certain ideas and beliefs when it comes to how we get this everyday energy, and how we should use it. Hillary Clinton is the Democratic candidate in this election, and she has been the Secretary of State during both terms of the Obama Administration.  She has long been known to support President Obama in all of his policies and ideals.  Secretary Clinton believes that the United States needs to invest in the research and implementation of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric.  She is completely against drilling for oil in order to obtain fossil fuels to power our nation.  She feels that it is a very invasive and destructive process that harms the environment that is irreversible and unable to be fixed.  Not only is she against drilling for oil, but she is also an extreme adversary of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing.  She demands that the Keystone XL pipeline never receives enough funding in order to be completed.  Mrs. Clinton is also an advocate of redeveloping former coalmine sites for alternative uses.
PURPOSE: In this blog, I will be discussing how different Hillary Clinton’s energy policies are.  I will be discussing where the flaws and discrepancies are in her ideas regarding renewable energy, oil drilling, fracking, and the Keystone XL pipeline.

EVIDENCE: First, Mrs. Clinton’s renewable energy plans call for a $60 billion “Clean Energy Challenge” in order to even get off the ground.  In order for her to do this, however, she would have to increase taxes on the public.  This tax will most likely be imposed on the middle and lower class, as Clinton is know to support corporate elitists who are a part of the top percentage in earners in the United States and even the world.  The tax increase on the middle and lower classes will be at least a 5-10% increase in order to cover the startup cost for the “Challenge,” and, therefore, would cause an even larger separation between the upper and lower classes.  While the social class gap increases between the upper and lower class, the middle class would continue to disappear. 
Second, her ideas regarding oil drilling are completely absurd.  She is quoted with saying that all oil drilling in the world should be stopped “at all costs as it could…be detrimental to all of society.”   Oil drilling does not harm the environment to the extent that Mrs. Clinton believes, and the environment is constantly being destroyed and rebuilt as a natural process.  The environment changes drastically every millennium, and the environment does not suffer “a large portion of the world’s pollution.”  If the United States would to start drilling for oil domestically, then we would be able to lower the price of gas; create jobs; and improve the overall economy due to the lowered reliance on overpriced Saudi oil.  Not only does drilling not harm the environment in an extreme way, but also the study that Clinton bases all of her renewable energy claims on was done by Oceana, a nonprofit agency that was hired by the Clinton campaign to research the issue.  Clinton also believes that fracking, hydraulic fracturing, is an inefficient and destructive process by which oil is obtained.  The process is performed by injecting water into an oil deposit in the earth’s crust until the deposit bursts into a capturing mechanism.  It is proven to be the most efficient method of obtaining oil.  Not to mention that every other candidate has a renewable energy plan, so Clinton is not using a “ground-breaking” idea with this policy.
Clinton does not support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline because it “could pose a threat to the local environment and water resources.”  This is something that she has told to America, and it can be put to rest by using the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline that solved the energy crisis that Alaska was experiencing at the time of its conception.  This pipeline would not only streamline oil right into the United States, but it would also make it possible to stop importing oil from the Saudis that are currently controlling the entire oil market due to the vice grip they have over middle eastern oil fields.  Canada would also be helping with the funding of the $8 billion project (which is only a fraction of what it would save the US in oil imports in the coming decade), and the US has not had a conflict with the nation of Canada since the War of 1812 (unlike with Saudi Arabia). 
CONCLUSION: In conclusion, Hillary Clinton has extremely flawed ideas when it comes to the so-called “energy crisis” the United States is experiencing right now.  She feels the need to raise taxes on the middle and lower classes by at least 5% in order to start a $60 billion “Clean Energy Challenge,” which would drive a larger gap between the social classes.  She also wants to completely rid the US of oil drilling and fracking because they are “destructive and harmful.”  This is a completely absurd idea because if the United States increased drilling and fracking, it would only boost the economy.  Finally, she feels that a Trans-Canada oil pipeline that is very similar to the Trans-Alaska pipeline would “harm the environment and water sources” even though it would only create jobs and lower oil costs in the US because it would no longer have to import it from the Middle East.
Sources




No comments:

Post a Comment