# Lots of Cheap Energy In Sight?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lots-of-cheap-energy-in-sight/261654>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [August 26, 2004, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lots-of-cheap-energy-in-sight/261654 "2004-08-26T18:52:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lots-of-cheap-energy-in-sight/261654/21 "2004-08-30T22:09:13Z")

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Yet More Aussies with novel energy ideas :-  
[Bananas could power Aussie homes](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3604666.stm)

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**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\
**Post date:** [August 31, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lots-of-cheap-energy-in-sight/261654/22 "2004-08-31T00:18:25Z")

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> [@Capt B. Phart](#):
>
> That’s because the oil has been about to run out in 10 years for as long as I can remember. The deadline hasn’t got any closer, so small teams of specialized scientists keep chugging along with their research, without anyone bothering them much.
> 
> When the oil does start to run out for real, and when it starts to hurt (and there’s lots of debate about when this will actually be) I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Manhattan Project or Apollo Program style effort - bringing in experts from many disciplines to crack the problems, things would move orders of magnitude more quickly.

It doesn’t necessarily have to run out. With China and India expanding their consumption (and having a much lower cost of transport) there will be economic pressures driving up oil prices for the foreseeable future. OPEC has been ramping up production for awhile now to try and drive down prices (and interest in fuel efficiency) and it hasn’t had much impact.

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**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\
**Post date:** [August 31, 2004, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lots-of-cheap-energy-in-sight/261654/23 "2004-08-31T01:51:31Z")

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> [@smiling bandit](#):
>
> if it was oil we wanted, we could have easily just bought it. Iraq was basically for sale at a very small political cost to Bush.

And if Hussein had been allowed to hang on to Kuwait in 1990, he would have sold its oil abroad on the world market, because what else was he going to do with it? That doesn’t mean America’s involvement in Gulf War I wasn’t mainly about oil. It was. It was about the all-important issue of who **controls** the oil. And so was the Iraq War.

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