What is a hard question about US energy policy?

If everyone is so concerned about carbon why is no-one talking about pyrolytic oil and black gold agriculture?

Ooh, interesting question. (P.S. What is the answer?!)

Maybe no-one knows yet, I heard about it on NPR. Here’s an overview from Delaware State… Australia is looking hard at it too.
It is the only carbon negative energy to date.

What would the implications of a (much) higher gas tax be?

How will people in the US react to $7/gallon gas? And $12/gallon gas? And how will other cultures cope with increasingly expensive oil? I guess we don’t know for absolutely sure that we’ll get to those prices, but I think we might, and we might very quickly, and it might be a good thing. It’ll be tough economically. People will have to change and change faster than is comfortable. And I think there are good things and bad things that could come of that kind of change.

@ljs22 @jdegrazia Those are good questions: what are the pros and cons of gas prices above $15 per gallon, say. Thanks!

if the price of oil gets that much then there will be a revolution in US. But all activists will be killed with a speech about war against terror. in some countries of eastern Europe and ex USSR in early 90’s the cost of gas was 3$ per 1 liter. It went on for about 1 year. people react. In some states there were demonstrations and shootings. But for example Armenia was in war and they could not afford another shooting. So the result is all taxi’s in that country are running on natural gas. It is much less cost and cleaner air.
It is very strange what people can do under pressure.
I guess what I am trying to say is nobody can predict. Life is a funny thing :-)

How can the US prepare an energy policy for the future when it bases current policy on past production capacity?

That is, ask yourself, why are future projections always pretty far off, whether by economists, or any other type of scientist?

The answer is that they base most of their work on the past. Back when computers were run on vacuum tubes, scientists estimated there wouldn’t be enough land space on the entire planet to run really big computers. They thought about computers covering the entire surface of the moon, or asteroids…

Disruptive technology is something “experts” never prepare for. Everything from the transistor, to fracking.