The Free Market is definitely the way to go, the problem is that it is closed off here in the US by not allowing further exploration and production of oil and gas right here on US soil.

Get the politics out of the way and allow free enterprise to take over and you will not only see energy prices plummet, but tax revenues increase. It will also reduce unemployment and improve the overall health of OUR economy.

John, the biggest impediment to domestic oil exploration and production is the green lobby. I have seen estimates giving the potential yield off the coast of California (Commiefornia) as being equal to or greater than that of the entire gulf region, but oil companies cannot go after it because the green lobby coerced the government into banning off-shore drilling so as to prevent a potential oil spill which, if it were to happen, might possibly mnake some of the wild life sick. Or even kill some species. But I say, the drilling and shipment of crude oil does not automatically lead to accidents and spills. Look how many millions of barrels are transported from the Persian Gulf every day without incident. To the greenies, I say, "Until each and every one of you gives up your car, your electricty, your gas heat, your refrigerator, your stove, your clothing made either by man or machine, and all the other trappings of modern civilization in which we live, you need to keep your collective traps shut. Until you give up the things that you are fighting against, your a what we like to call a hypocrite. I'm looking at you, AlGore.

Based on all their lies, in order to force a socialist agenda down our throats, I'm to the point that I don't believe anything the dems say. If they want fuel independence, we have our own oil sources, but they hate oil companies. We have abundant sources of coal, but of course that's a source of global warming (another leftist lie). And I agree with Brien, that when algore, pelosi, obama and the rest of the hypocrites do what they preach, I may pay them some attention.

I find this comment amusing: "We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil". "Foreign oil", eh?. Here's a thought: how about Domestic oil?

I guess maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I like my hydrocarbons. We would not have had an inustrial revolution without the hydrocarbon. The hydrocarbon has given us the quality of life we enjoy today. The problem is that the hydrocarbon has given us independance, and we all know how liberals feel about that.

United States Government "TURN THE AMERICANS LOOSE" We are into this "global dependence on oil" because of all the "rules and regulations" on the Oil industry from our government!!!! All of the contrived schemes to Stop oil exploration comes from the "Office of the President" - EPA and the environmental kooks.

Not only is the "government noose" on the oil exploration, but the government has a "strangle-hold" on the situations at the refineries.

Cut the Americans loose, drill the wells, establish more refineries, stop government rules, regulations, and mandates on private enterprise.

Turn us loose and LEAVE US ALONE.

For God & Country

Ruth Ann Wilson

When I pump gas, I thank God that we were smart enough to explore it, develop the engine that burns it, put the engine in a car that accomodates five people, build the roads to carry it, and give us the strength to work and pay for it all. What a great country we have that allows us to be independent thinkers and doers without too much government interference!

I know what happened to Washington's army at Valley Forge, PA when the government tried to interfere with the price of food and kept it very low via price controls - Washington's army nearly starved to death, the farmers sold to the British (for gold).

I have to disagree with Mr. Stossel on this one. Although free markets are the way to go our inability to be energy independent is a threat to our national security. So long as we must rely on foreign imports we are vulnerable. I remember the gas lines of the 70s that resulted from an embargo. I can see the strange politics created from being so beholden to unsavory states. Again, free trade is fine but as long as we're so completely dependent on the goods from other nations we are at risk. Now if the Government would just get the hell out of our way we could solve this problem in short order.

Mr. Stossel's argument is based on the assumption that there is anything such as a free market. There isn't and there never has been. Every part of the fossil-fuel economy is subsidized already, from the road building to the externalized costs of pollution (and please, don't start denying that there is such a thing as pollution--just go to Appalachia to see the gruesome results of modern coal extraction).

I ask that people on this board take a look at what China is doing. They are mandating higher efficiencies in lighting and architecture, building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined, and are now the world's biggest builder of hydroelectric turbines. Why? Because they know that energy independence is the way to go, and they are moving on it. Not for reasons of environmental concern (though anyone who has been to China lately can tell you how bad the air is), but for reasons of steady growth and money-making.

We don't want to live in China, or in a Chinese system, but some myth about how a free market solves all problems is pure fantasy.

dsw, there would be a "free market" if the Fed would get out of the way. Yes there are endless regulations, but subsidies are also a form of "government getting in the way" because it stifles competition. If the government were removed from the picture (we live in an imperfect world, so SOME regulation is necassary) including subsidies, and companies were allowed to rise and fall based on their merit, a "free market" system world definately prevail.

Yes, we haven't had "free" markets in a long, long while; with this I agree. The solution to that problem, however, remains the same. Everything the government touches turns sour.

Ronald Reagan once said that there is no problem so great or situation so dire that government intervention cannot make it worse. :)

"So long as we must rely on foreign imports we are vulnerable."

But that argument assumes that we're dependent on foreign oil or we're switched to non-petroleum energy sources like wind and water. What about the gazillions of barrels of oil and cubic feet of natural gas in our own territories? We're forbidden by law from doing much of anything with them, and THAT is the chief reason we're dependent on foreign oil.

Care to know how we got that way? Those foreign oil producers along with environmentalists hired lobbyists to convince Congress not to use our own oil. That's just crazy.

"based on the assumption that there is anything such as a free market. There isn't and there never has been"

This argument misunderstands what Stossel and other free market advocates are trying to achieve. The argument complains that we shouldn't try to achieve a free market because there isn't a free market. That's like telling the Wright brothers at Kittyhawk that we mustn't build airplanes because there aren't any airplanes.

Noboby is arguing for a totally anarchistic free market system, 100% free of all regulation. But the current system is a nest of chaotic regulations that feed off of and contradict each other and generate not only massive inefficiencies but also unsustainable situations like our current dependence on foreign oil. Maybe there are alternative-energy sources. If so, then subsidizing various such systems is a good way to find the ones that are NOT viable (in other words, that require subsidies in order to work). Letting the free markets find them is a good way to find the ones that WILL work in the real world, without wasteful and counter-productive subsidies.

Thank you, posters, for your responses.

Just to make things clear: I am for free markets. I am also not into denying reality. The reality is that the freest markets, meaning the ones that operate efficiently, serve consumers well, and push business owners to innovate in order to gain an edge, are the ones that work at small scale. The restaurant scene in any sizable city is exactly this kind of market. There are others. Small banks, for example. It's beautiful to see, and it works well. Here I totally agree, government is often in the way.

That said, large industries do not have a good record when operating without regulation. Not because they are necessarily doing anything evil, but because at a certain scale, the best way to gain a competitive edge is simply to grow and absorb your competition. Rockefeller started his business in a day when there were very few regulatory obstacles. Result: monopoly. Same with Carnegie and his companies. Same with the modern-day tendencies in a deregulated environment. That's how get all the media mergers, bank mergers, and, yes, again, energy company mergers. Less competition, not more. Less innovation, not more. Profits are not reinvested.

This is basic capitalist logic, nothing mysterious, every corporate executive knows it, every free market economist knows it, and every socialist knows it. It's not an ideological argument. So, please stop pretending that a "free market" is the answer to our energy challenges. It's about deciding what we want as a country, and then making a national effort toward that goal, public and private concerns working together. That's what we once had in the country, that's what we've lost, and that's what countries like Brazil and China have rediscovered.

We have been hearing about wind, solar power, since the 70's. And yet, no-one has been able to make it fees-able.

"Wind farms"......what a joke. How many of those things would have to be built, across this nation, to give us a steady supply of power? What happens on a nice calm day, when there is no wind?

"Solar"......What happens when we have a weeks worth of cloudy weather? (Like we are experiencing now, here).

"Fear of oil spills".......happens when a ship runs aground, or gets tossed by nasty sea weather.

Our drilling technology has advance so much, that environmental impact would be nill. (They said the caribou would suffer in Alaska because of the pipeline.........IT'S FLOURISHING!

Liberal environmentalists do only one thing......screw everything up! (And they do it quite well!)

It's time for the people in this country, to ALL stand up, and say..."screw them! DRILL IT!

What are they going to do? Sabotage the equipment?

I think it goes to show, (especially being witness to the last year), that liberals are just not right......about a large number of things.

One more thing.....

Carbon dioxide......helps plants and trees to grow and flourish.

Have a nice day. :)

Wind and solar energy will never be a good source of commercial power. That works best for each consumer to free themselves from the grid. The government needs to up the build of nuclear power. Technology of nuclear power has made leaps and bounds over what it was in the '60's. Do some research and you can see they can produce power from nuclear fuel without enrichment that is far more powerful than enriched fuel. There are vast expanses of open land around the country that is not inhabited by people so there is no need to worry about it being in your own backyard. While there are some concerns about nuclear plants, poper security measures will prevent most if not all problems. Why does Europe have so many if nuclear plants are so bad?

On the topic of alternative fuel vehicles, that falls back on the unions and car builders for lobbying against their production. The oil lobbyists and auto industry lobbyists are in the same pocket of politicians. They go hand-in-hand. Part of our problem with the dependance to fossil fuels is the breakdown of parts of society. There are people all over the US that don't own cars or need cars. They live in area where they can walk or ride a bike to get everywhere they need to be. In a small part they may ride buses to commute, but they are there with dozens of other people doing the same thing.

It's time for people to lessen the dependance on commercial goods by planting gardens (that have plants that use CO2), producing their own food of all sorts, raising livestock and poultry. Anything with a wrapper or container uses fossil fuels to develop and ship to stores.

We put ourselves in this mess. We need to get back to our roots and consume less or only what we need. We also need to push the advancement of the rail system. GE has developed green train engines that can move more goods with less fuel use than what semi-trucks can move. It will lower the impact on our constant need to repair highways because of the traffic as well as smog created by the traffic caused by excessive truck traffic. There is no need for a truck to leave the east coast and travel to the west coast half full to move goods, when they can be put on trains. I know there will be people who may oppose what I say because they are truck drivers or in the packaging industry. I'm sorry. We lower our carbon footprint or fuel use by lowering our consumption. That works in so many ways to improve health, lowering health care costs and promoting industry since local producers can better supply the community than national producers.

I say this tongue in cheek, but half serious, we should stop all domestic oil production.

Only buy from offshore suppliers. Then when the world runs out of oil, and it will someday, we will have the last reserves.

DSW, you have a much better understanding of free markets than most people I've discussed the concept with recently. That's a delight :)

"Not because they are necessarily doing anything evil, but because at a certain scale, the best way to gain a competitive edge is simply to grow and absorb your competition."

While that's what we do expect intuitively, and we read about it quite often because it certainly does happen, it's not even half the story. The reason very large companies often divorce themselves from free market principles isn't because they're trying to absorb their competition. Usually when they merge or buy up a competitor it's to make the company MORE competitive. No, they abandon free market principles because it dawns on them that it's easier and cheaper to manipulate government regulators into doing anti-competitive things that harm the competition and make the business environment nice for the company.

Take Wal-Mart's startling endorsement of Obamacare last summer. Were you surprised? I certainly was. Until I started reading analysts' dissection of their reasoning, and then it was revealed as cynical and self-serving. Wal-Mart knew that while Obamacare would be very tough on the company, it would be even harder on the competition -- Target, KMart, etc. Wal-Mart could absorb that added cost more readily than any competitor could do, which is good for Wal-Mart. They were operating under the theory that anything that's bad for the competition must be good for Wal-Mart.

That's why big business often seems anti-competitive, because they learn how to game the regulatory system.

There's a certain amount of corruption that comes with scale, but there's also a large and quite vocal community of watchdogs that blows the whistle on most corruption. Look, they hauled Microsoft into court and took the company for billions of dollars on "monopoly" charges. What did Microsoft do that was so wrong? They gave away their browser. For free. So with huge companies, pretty often even when you're not doing something wrong you still get nailed to the wall. For every Enron there are 100 Intels. We hear a lot more about the Enrons partly because the dollars involved are huge, but also because they're rare. That alone makes them newsworthy.

Lots of good comments posted here. The energy situation in this country right now is very precarious at best. We can not continue to send so much money and jobs outside of our borders. For the short term we need to start drilling within our borders. We can not afford to give oil companies a free pass to rape and pillage the land/oceans for oil. So I believe we need to keep a leash on them to keep them in line.

Solar and wind are viable alternatives on a personal level today. A person living in the right area of the country can rely on mostly wind and/or solar power for their house. If everyone in rural areas in the west and south would use self generated energy we could save approximately 25%-35% of our consumption. I don't believe in making that mandatory as it should be a personal decision.

For large scale power generation nuclear power is the only viable answer. Today we have nuclear fision which has improved in technology greatly since the 60's, as Tony B pointed out above. For the future though we need to develop nuclear fusion. Fusion has no waste bi-product, it is pure energy. We can not rely on free market to develop it because it will be extremely expensive to develop the technology. It will have to be the responsibility of a nation to do this. This means government funding of research. Once it is a viable technology it will be a very cheap and abundant energy source. This energy source could also be used to power vehicles, space craft, etc.

I am a capitalist conservative, want smaller government, and believe in the free market. Sometimes though, a society has to pull together for the betterment of the society. Support nuclear fusion, it is the power source of the future.