Teslas are also supposed to be pretty safe, they do have higher up front costs, but cheaper in the long run.
http://www.wired.com/2013/08/tesla-model-s-crash-test/
And why are those areas zoned industrial? Ever seen an area before it is realized that it has coal or oil?
Just like every kind of power plant and many kinds of industrial works.
If the oil company needs it to be there it would take a lot of protests to stop it from happening. Forget about “within sight”, there are people actively looking to drill for oil in national parks right now.
I remember driving the “enchanted circle” around Taos, NM. Most of it is in the Kit Carson forest which was called “the forest of many uses” on highway signs, or something like that. There was a big, nasty looking molybdenum mine at one point! It sure looked like park land except for that.
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Just for clarification: Don’t confuse drilling and refining. There are oil wells all over this country. There are only 139 operating refineries and they are refining product that is transported to the refinery. They don’t build refineries near new wells. In fact,they don’t build refineries at all any more. The last complex refinery was built in 1977.
I understand the distinction but did a bad job of separating statements there - if the oil industry needed a new refinery within sight of a national park, I think that it would take massive protests to stop it from happening. And on the extraction side, many people in industry view national parks simply as resources that have not yet been tapped, and are actively trying to exploit those resources even if it makes the park useless to the public or causes substantial ecological damage.
My husband both me a new SUV for Christmas. It was to replace the same vehicle that I drove for 12 years. I love it and will likely have this one for another 12-15 . He recently used it instead of his own vehicle that he bought for our business. He drives a Nissan NV . He drove it to Florida from NJ while towing a trailer and it just didn’t cut it when it came to power or fuel efficiency .
Mine has a trailer hitch and he got a much better mileage, despite the 4- 8 cylinder difference. Sometimes , you just need a big vehicle with a strong engine. After our youngest leaves for college, I will likely take that long drive to Fla , and you can bet I will take the comfort and power of my SUV over his van.
Federal regulations have already halted construction of new refineries. No massive protests required. And there is no reason a refinery would ever be “needed” near a national park, or in any other specific location, although it would certainly be convenient if we didn’t have to transport product across the country to the Texas Gulf Coast. Also, a horizontal/directional well could produce oil under a national park and you would never even notice. I know this isn’t the main theme of this thread, but there is a lot of misinformed hype all over the internet, so I just had to give my highly informed 2 cents.
The oil industry has been begging Congress for permission to build new refineries for years. If it’s so easy to get approval for new refineries, why haven’t we had a new refinery built in 30+ years?
Some of the refinerys were about to close for lack of raw material according to this article.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101823507
The refineries are selling some of their product overseas, where they can charge more.
I suppose we could build more, so they can make even more profit, if that’s really what you want.
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/25/306842160/gasoline-prices-rise-as-u-s-refineries-send-more-fuel-overseas
The lapse in building new refineries was because expanding new ones was easier for everyone involved. Recent developments have tilted that balances bit though:
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=29&t=6
This one is about 20 miles from Medicine Bow National Forest. I’m sure it’s very pretty. The refinery, not the forest.
That one is 25 miles from Teddy Roosevelt National Park in the ND Badlands. Pretty rugged country, I would be surprised if there were not numerous points in the park where a refinery 25 miles away would be visible.
New refineries are pretty rare. That wasn’t really the point. The point is that for all the complaints about solar panels in the desert and wind turbines on the horizon, the infrastructure for fossil fuels has a massive and expanding footprint as well as a host of “minor” intrusions on supposedly protected lands and accidental spills that are still happening more than a century after these technologies came into use.
And that should have been “expanding old ones”…