Debate+Questions

=** Debate Question: How can the United States not depend entirely on foreign oil? **=

** Pros: **
If the U.S. cuts back on buying foreign oil we will have more money to put into researching alternative energy sources.

Researchers could start to build turbines for wind power, solar panels for solar power, dams for hydroelectric power, and/or steam turbine for geothermal power.

The U.S. would not have to send as many troops, ships, and resources to fight wars over oil and/or just to secure oil shipment back to the U.S.

If the foreign oil companies stop selling us their oil we need to have a back up plan like alternative energy sources, so we should start that back up sooner than later.

Lower prices on oil have not reduced our dependence on oil because basically every family in the U.S. drives a car.

The U.S. gives about 700 billion dollars to companies like OPEC for oil, when we could use that money to pay off some of our debt.

**Cons:**
Using foreign oil is cheaper than finding some other source of energy, or those other sorces are decades away from our time.

Development of alternative fuels is being blocked by national policies and corporate commitments which only leaves uses of oil in the U.S.

The U.S. can't make incentives to not using oil, because incentives usually lead to bad technology, so far we don't have good technology to use instead of oil

We already have 10 or 20 reserves of oil in the ground somewhere, it wouldn't make much sense if those companies drop what they are doing which is wasting millions of dollars, to go spend about another million to find alternatives

Trying to use other resources like tar sands, can cost the U.S millions, and can make an environmental upset

Other alternatives like using corn to make ethanol takes a lot of corn to make the amount the U.S. needs, and food production will drop dramatically