Re:Oil free by choice or coercion? (Score 2, Insightful)

Well, as long as we are judging things on the basis of "merit" we should calculate the true price of oil with all the extranalities involved in the equation and none of the tax breaks and subsides that the oil industry recieves. The external costs of the drilling, transporting, refining, transporting again, and then the end use of oil are incalculable. Consider things like an army to protect the oil at its source, how much does it cost to maintain the ships to transport this oil, what's the environmental toll payed in cleanup costs for every oil spell, the enormous rise in health care costs caused by polution, the money it takes to build roads, cars, etc... many of these costs would still persist in a 'hydrogen economy' but many not, and many would disapear if we would only learn the true cost of our consumption and then account for it. I'll have my 'oil-free' economy any day thank you.