Meteor Blades at the Daily Kos raises an issue that is sure to make conservative skins crawl: nationalizing energy.
Conservatives always tell us, no amount of contrary evidence notwithstanding, that the private sector can do a better job than the government, that collection of screw-ups that brought you Medicaid, Medicare, public education, public roads, and so on.
The recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and beyond serves as a painful reminder that private sector can be just as inept, and as dangerous or more, as the government is alleged to be. But there are nations, for example in Norway or France, that run things better than the United States, from an environmental safety point of view. The dirty little secret that conservatives don't want you to find out about is that the energy sector of those two countries is, for the most part, nationalized.
The oil spill in the Gulf is definitely
ReplyDeletea wakup call to the oil service industry
to provide better control over deep
offshore wells, and better emergency
response on cleanup.
This will *not* stop offshore drilling.
While you may be able to restrict
American or Euro-American companies from
drilling offshore US, this will not
stop offshore drilling by other countries
in waters of countries
neighboring the US, or beyond the 200
mile limit.
You can bet that nothing will stop
China from drilling offshore from
Cuba or Mexico, which they are already
doing.
We live in a petroleum-based world economy. That will not change any time soon, so get used offshore drilling and oil spills.