As I said before, this compromise crap is awful.  It could easily open more areas to destruction by offshore drilling, and would also include destruction of the new horror of oil shale.

What people who support these deals don't get is that where a type of environmental harm due to the source of energy is identified, what's needed is a complete replacement of that source.  Merely throwing some bones to the environment while continuing destructive behavior does nothing positive overall and in fact is quite negative.

am i a fan of hydrocarbons' hold on our society and economy?  heck no.  but i recognize that one can't take a 100+ year old infrastructure and simply discard it in favor of another infrastructure that's going to be 10 years in the making.  we can't ignore the fact that it's been FOREIGN oil's hold on our way of life for the past 30 years that's driven us blindly into deals with middle-eastern undesirables, killed or wounded our most susceptible youth once they're recruited into the armed forces, caused us to ignore our core beliefs as americans (torture? aggressive wars?).  the more petroleum is produced here in the u.s., accompanied by new-infrastructure initiatives such as the ones in this bill, the more we weaken the hold that foreign-produced oil has on our lives...and the more likely it will be that we can rebuild any high ground that we've lost.

The following comment from the article is blatantly false:
'The bill also includes a five-year extension of tax credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency. These tax extensions have passed repeatedly in the House, but they keep getting held up in the Senate where Republicans have blocked energy bills that don't include more drilling'.
Please tell us about HR 5984 which passed the Senate as S 2821 by a margin of 88 - 8. This Bill only concerned extending the tax credits and contains none of the pork barelling of the compromise bill.
HR 5984 goes much further in that it removes the existing cap on residential tax credits so consumers get as much as the corporations. The corporations still get the accelerated depreciation but this Bill was much more consumer friendly than any Bill originating in the House.

Please tell us why the Leadership refused to submit HR 5984 to a vote in the House instead of repeating their propaganda.

I will encourage my Congressman to vote against this compromise. I could not find the text of the Bill on Thomas.

for that information on the legislation, which is sitting in Ways and Means (congress) and Finance (senate) - we should all push for it. i don't see any reason to "give" these mercenaries anything in return for renewable energy incentives - it is insane that they are even bullying us into this discussion!

rahreh, it sounds like your heart is in the right place, so i hope you can help me.  i am curious when people equate "Americans" with "Big Oil Drilling in America," since oil is a global commodity, Big Oil is completely free to do as it likes, and the chances of you or i actually buying (or owning - ha!) the oil that comes from our neighborhoods is close to zero.  it will get exported to China, we will buy other oil from the Saudis for high prices, and Big Oil will just get richer off of poisoning our environment and extending their monopolies a few miles and a few decades into the future.  

why do you think that they would suddenly start keeping oil here, when they already export nearly all the oil they extract in the US?  i suspect this is a red herring put out there to confuse people with a bogeyman of "foreign oil terrorists" or similar, because i have never heard mention that 100% of oil drilled in America will now be required to be sold and consumed in America - am i missing something?

the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

: =It could easily open more areas to destruction by offshore drilling, and would also include destruction of the new horror of oil shale.

Obviously, when you drill, you're poking a hole in something, so there is some destruction. But do you know that these huge offshore drilling rigs create a reef-like ecosystem where oceanlife flourishes? If this were known and supported by Al Gore and the fear-mongering greenies, they'd spin it to say that it's like investing in fish-carbon-credits, since it's offsetting overfishing in other parts of the world.

My point is that these rigs actually help ocean life by creating a man-made reef ecosystem. They are very clean, and will help us cut the cord on foreign oil. You do know that it's the oil tankers shipping oil half-way across the globe that pollute the most right? Even in hurricane Katrina, the big oil rigs spilled nary a drop of oil into the water...