Let’s Leave Some Oil for Use in the Future

Re “White House Puts the West on Fast Track for Oil, Gas Drilling,� Aug. 25: Instead of drilling the West in a vain attempt to control petroleum prices, perhaps we should leave it in the ground for our grandchildren.

I can imagine a half-dozen ways we could heat our buildings and run our factories and our cars without petroleum, but I can’t think of a single way to fly our planes without petroleum. Can you? Alcohol or hydrogen dirigibles, perhaps.

Let’s save some of it for future generations.

Richard Sand

Whittier

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Right on schedule! Remember those closed energy meetings this crew didn’t want the American people to know about? You know, the ones held in the early days of the Bush administration, the attendance lists of which they refuse to share? I bet they went something like this: “Sure, no problem, just wait ‘til we sneak this Iraq thing past the idiots, and we’ll definitely start right in on longtime domestic drilling plans.�

To Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, President Bush and your several unsavory pals and hunting cronies: We’re done with you. Now, go to your cells and think about what you’ve done.

Patrick DeSantis

Toluca Lake

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Re “Empty Rhetoric on Energy,� editorial, Aug. 25: For 40 years I have been in favor of pricing petroleum, which includes both oil and natural gas, in accordance with its occurrence as a depletable commodity. Oil does not grow on trees and is irreplaceable, once it is gone, except at higher prices.

At higher prices there is an abundance of petroleum reserves, not now economical, ready to enter the marketplace. The old adage, “What you pay nothing for, you think of as nothing,� is directly applicable to our present oil and gas predicament.

Higher prices, while bringing about economic dislocations, will produce the conservation The Times advocates.

Arthur O. Spaulding

Ojai

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Your editorial may rekindle interest in the possibility of replacing gasoline use or at least a large portion of it with ethanol. Since it is not our obligation to feed the rest of the world, could the U.S. produce enough food for its own use and then convert the remaining agriculture production for ethanol crops? As for any economic loss to agriculture, it could be off set by subsidies with funds taken from the foreign aid budget.

Maybe we could send a message to the rest of the world: It is important for countries to be self-sufficient both in providing their own energy and in feeding their own populations and stopping international welfare.

Michael E. Muravez

La Habra