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Comment by BluePoints | Hacker News Reader

The US should follow their energy independence stance... there is no reason why they can and we can't.

Sure, if the US wanted to destroy five sixths of its economy to match Brazil's $8000 per capita GDP then I'm sure that would reduce US energy usage considerably. I'm not sure it would be a worthwhile tradeoff.

There's also the fact that Brazil has a great sugar cane growing climate which the US lacks... I'm not actually sure whether ethanol production is a significant enough factor to cancel out the fact that US oil production is nearly twice Brazil's.

I don't really see why we should try to be indpendant in energy rather than copper or cars or anything else. Trade and specialization are important and its only nationalism to want to try to produce everything in one's own country. Now if you're saying that we shouldn't be dependant on the the particular countries that now produce oil I might agree, but what would be wrong with the US being dependant on Mexican solar energy or Brazilian sugarcane?

problem here is we choose to not depend on Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. we instead impose huge import tariffs to protect our possibly net-energy-negative corn ethanol lobby.

I think "energy independence" is often used loosely as a euphemism for "less oil dependence." At the end of the day, relying on other countries for corn ethanol, solar, wind, or hydro electricity is fine because any country can openly compete for our business. Oil production has become a natural monopoly, which makes it a huge security concern.

One way to approach this is to reduce our oil-specific energy needs (for example, gas cars) and migrate those to energy agnostic needs, so that your car can be fueled by a hydro plant in Washington State, a solar farm outside Vegas, some Brazilian Ethanol, some Virginian Cole, and some Saudi crude -- depending on each resources' availability to the grid.

I was going to say "scale" just like every other terse response on why the US can't do anything from universal healthcare to ultra-high speed (like Korea and Japan levels) broadband Internet, to interstate public transit, and now energy independence. There's just too damn many people in the states for it to compare favorably to any other country.

Then I saw that Brazil has 200 Million people. So there goes that argument?

Moreover, I also tried to argue about it on geographic size, only to find out that the US is only nominally larger in land size than Brazil.

So, maybe it's because of culture? As in, we have so many different races and religions and creeds, all with their own individual thoughts and beliefs, and all of them can't _possibly_ get together as one and get stuff done. I know, pathetic excuse, right? I've heard that so many times about why Asia gets fast bandwidth, cheap mobile voice/data and bullet trains and universal healthcare and why we can't.

    So, maybe it's because of culture? As in, we 
    have so many different races and religions 
    and creeds, all with their own individual 
    thoughts and beliefs, and all of them can't 
    _possibly_ get together as one and get stuff done.

So this one is also the same as Brazil then? ;)

The US uses 9x as much oil as Brazil.

And the US produces 4x as much oil as Brazil uses.

The reason Brazil is able to be energy independent is because of poverty. They use less energy because fully 1/3 of the country is poor on a level that is incomprehensible in the developed world (living in shanty towns and slums without access to clean water or sewers).

Really, I've read that it's less than 20%[1], which isn't 1/3. Abject poverty or indigence (the "no clean water or sewers") rate, according to the link I dug up, is 7%.

I mean, compare the poverty threshold is US$10000, wherein 15% of Americans fall in. Additionally, 6-7% fall in extreme poverty, where US citizens make less than 50% of the poverty threshold[2].

So, as in your argument, it's all about scale.

[1]http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/09/20/2954375.htm

[2]http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/the-poorest-sta...

> I mean, compare the poverty threshold is US$10000, wherein 15% of Americans fall in. Additionally, 6-7% fall in extreme poverty, where US citizens make less than 50% of the poverty threshold[2].

The poverty thresholds are different. (In addition, the US, the poverty numbers don't always count govt aid received.)

Would you rather be poor in Brazil or poor in the US?

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