We need more Energy
It’s sad when Paris Hilton makes more sense than government leaders. PickensPlan.com and AmericanSolutions.com have plans that do exactly what she espouses in her commercial. Read them and think about joining them.
Most everyone agrees that our current energy policies are unacceptable. Demonizing fossil fuels will not solve the problem. Look around you Plastic, Glass, Metal, Fiber, and Silicon all need Oil and Coal to produce. There is no Utopian alternative available. Admitting to having a problem is the first step towards solving it. We will have to utilize carbon-based energy for many generations to come. We have and will continue to become more efficient in its usage. The population continues to grow and immediate elimination of fossil fuels will lead to grave consequences.
We currently produce around 6% of our energy using renewables. We aren't going to find the other 94% overnight. I love Wind Turbines, Solar Panels, Hydro Electric, Nuclear, etc. and hope we find true breakthroughs soon, but I refuse to fall victim to the green rhetoric that is contributing to the stagnation, litgation, and burdensome regulation of our economy.
Creation and expansion of energy resources creates value. Our government (which is us) would be paid fees and royalties for the right to drill, which should be invested in renewable energy projects. Economics 101 shows that increased supplies of energy will bring prices down. It’s a win-win.
We must keep energy money in the USA, because it protects national security, keeps the dollar strong, and supports quality high tech jobs. As stewards of the planet, we are all environmentalists. We can responsibly use its bountiful resources.
James Thomas Shell
What has changed. Why did we not learn any lessons from $4 gasoline? Remember when the Hurricane hit the Gulf of Mexico in mid September that year and the gasoline lines?
Oil fell below $40 a barrel and hovered around $70 over the subsequent two years and everyone went back to sleep, because gas seemed affordable compared to those $4+ prices. Everyone seems to want to forget that period that kick started the economic slide that continues to assault the American middle class. You cannot wish these economic realities away and we have wasted time in we should have been fervently addressing these issues. The crescendo of these realities continue to build and anyone who cares to face the truth can obviously see that we still face the same issues today as we did 2 1/2 years ago.
Today Oil hit $103 per barrel. This steady march has little to do with what we see in Egypt. The main reason, in my opinion, for this progressive increase is the devaluation of our currency. But, what we see is our vulnerability in relation to the world economy. Just as we have seen the rise in staple food commodities and precious metals that I addressed in the article Icelandic volcano displays our vulnerability related to the World Economy. The United States needs to get its house in order and address the issues that it faces.
It is obvious that Egypt is a powder keg, even though most people don't really understand the forces at play under the current state of affairs. You can't really trust what you see and hear as relayed by our media, who never tells it like it is. We all know that they serve an agenda. Isn't that obvious? The media has joined forces with the people who they support in our government and that is the viewpoint you will get. There is no objectivity.
The problems with Egypt are fairly simple. They made a deal with Israel and have suffered some severe consequences as a result of that deal. The Arabs really don't want to help Mubarak or this regime, because of the deal they made with Israel. This deal got Anwar Sadat assassinated. Egypt fought wars against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. The peace accords came in 1979 and Sadat was assassinated in 1981. The economy is terrible and the people are starving, because of the worldwide increase in food prices (Global Food Prices Hit All-Time High As Violence Erupts In Yemen - February 3, 2011 - Forbes.com).
The Suez Canal is the key in this whole scenario. Israel took control of the Sinai Peninsula after the Six-Day War in 1967. They occupied the entire Peninsula until the peace accords were signed in 1979. Egypt closed the Suez Canal after the June 1967 war and did not reopen it until June 1975.
The people of Egypt look at the United States as an entity that fostered the relationship between Egypt and Israel. Egypt's membership to the League of Arab Nations was suspended in 1979 after it signed a peace treaty with Israel; the league's headquarters was moved from Cairo, Egypt, to Tunis, Tunisia. In 1987, Arab leaders decided to renew diplomatic ties with Egypt. Egypt was readmitted to the league in 1989 and the league's headquarters was moved back to Cairo.
Many people in Egypt and around the world understand the power of the American dollar. The Dollar is the World Reserve Currency. Oil is traded on world markets in American dollars. The people of Egypt (and the world) may not completely understand the role of the Federal Reserve in the loss of value of the American dollar as a monetary instrument, but they understand its force as a means of trade. The loss of value of the dollar (inflation) has played a major role in the growing expense of food. This increased cost is not affordable to the poor people of Egypt. Do you not think that these people are going to blame us for this.
Strike three is the fact that these people see these ships flowing through their canal and they know where that oil is flowing to. Can you really not understand the thin ice that we are treading on? Isn't it time to stop the games and face the reality? Or are we going to still stick our head in the sand and pretend that these problems don't exist?
It is time to quit compartmentalizing these issues. They are all interconnected. It is time to face the challenges. We can achieve energy independence and defuse these time bomb situations. People talk about being self-reliant and at the same time they refuse to understand the context of this dangerous world and the challenges we face. We are vulnerable, because the vast majority of the people of this nation refuse to face the real issues of the day and therefore a day of reckoning is fast approaching. It saddens me to know this, but folks we are pushing a snowball up a hill and we better wake up or bad things we never fathomed being possible just a few years ago will not only be at our doorstep, they will happen!!!
5 comments:
All together now: "If we ok'd drilling now it would be ten years before we got any oil." Let the wind blow, let the sunshine.
You bring up valid points, but I think your conclusions are erroneous. There is a basic assumption that the mega oil corporations want to do something about consumption. No, they want to make money. As long as 'speculators' drive the price on the commodities market, there will be no stablization in price. The sheer arrogance of this nation thinking that it could control resources in other countries for any length of time was the most insidious foreign policy concept that's ever been devised and implemented. Remember how the oil companies squealed with anguish after the price per barrel dropped dramatically? How they couldn't sustain operations since they had budgets set on a fixed price per barrel? That operating budget really hasn't adjusted that much. I see what is transpiring as the culmination of the market research that was conducted those 2+ years ago. Whatever the market will bear is how those prices are determined. How else can you explain, for example, 3 or 4 or 5 gas stations around Hickory with the same parent company selling gas at different prices? Is the money some how worth more on US 70 than it is in Viewmont, or vice versa? But the biggest thing, the one thing that should have tipped everyone off in 2008 was the installation of the electronic pricing boards at most of the gas stations. When you demonstrate a need to adjust prices that frequently, how can anyone expect any sort of stablization in the market? That's my generalized and broad overview of oil pricing. But this little problem goes way beyond 2008. It dates back to that time the Suez was closed, to the early 1970's. The time of the very first oil embargo and gasoline shortage. We vanely tried to address it then. Remember the Vega? The Pinto? Not to mention the regulations that were and are continually passed and then suspended because companies get a different controlling majority voted in to Congress and give those corporations what they want. Nowhere in that process does "We The People" become a factor except to be fed a non-stop string of half truths in order to sway votes. We can put a video camera in a fountain pen, but we lack the ingenuity to produce a vehicle that can achieve 30-35 miles per gallon and not be an underpowered rolling roadblock. It took most of the 80's for Detroit to re-tool with our next notion of rampant consumption, the rise of the SUV. the land yacht status symbol for the upwardly mobile, with the requisite tax incentives to purchase those kinds of vehicles and the utter disregard and revulsion for mass public transportation. Oh those were easy to build and sell, because that's what the new generations of X and Y wanted and demanded. Of course, it isn't hard to see why. Ride by any school prior to the school starting or ending. Look at the empty or nearly empty buses and the number of SUVs and cars with parents picking up little Johnny or Sally, because someone has the arrogance to think 'their' child is too good to ride the bus and they have the time and disposable income to flaunt that arrogance, instilling it in yet another generation. Self indulgence, greed, and the lack of an ability to see anything other than self. Ultimately all of us will suffer, but the weak, the poor, the less fortunate first. Since they are more numerous than the affluent and as that suffering turns to anger, well, we will have to see what happens, won't we?
I enjoyed that summation, as related to the Arab Oil Embargo. People have to be at least my age (mid 40s) to remember that.
I also can see some validity to the school thing, but the reality of that situation for the most part boils down to security for the kid and not arrogance. You have kids getting bullied and school systems that turn a blind eye when the kid is getting bullied. I wouldn't want my kid riding on a school bus under the circumstances I have experienced, seen, and know about. You can't blame parents for that.
And I have witnessed the kids being ill-prepared by the schools. I will grant the teachers that the teachers face a system where many parents don't care, but there is also the social engineering aspect where schools have been turned into a meat grinder, where they take kids as individuals (with their capabilities and talents) and try to force feed them through a social engineering model and make them all the same. This is not working!
I do believe that our current agenda of governance stifles ingenuity and creativity. I think you will agree that both the left and the right have harmed the creative system of merit and innovation that brought this nation to a golden age 50 years ago.
Nothing ever has been or ever will be perfect here on Earth, but at least we were striving to better ourselves, our community, and our society then. Now, it seems all anyone cares about is the moment. No one builds for the future. No one is working towards helping one another with the future in mind. It is all about materialism and entertainment, when people better reconcile with their inner being and enlightenment. It just seems so sad, when you really look at it.
Peace
I couldn't agree more with that last paragraph. In my view, concerning schools, who is to blame? Do the parents mostly not elect the school boards who set the policy? The meat grinder of the schools is by necessity, a warehouse. It is place where all things related to being human and humane are to be taught. To illustrate that concept, let me turn to the enigma of 'No Child Left Behind'. I will concede that there are teachers who perhaps hide well within the system. However, there quality is now measured on 'performance' on standardized testing. Independent of how well you teach, the child has to have the capacity and the intelluctual maturity to grasp and learn. So, absent one or both of those attributes, no matter your methodology, some children are just not going to progress or grasp certain things. If that were not so, then we'd all be doctors, or rocket scientists. So when you have some parent who insists in the inclusion of one child that takes an inordinate amount of time and attention because it is that child's 'right' to be taught, you are re-enforcing the notion that the good of the one outweighs the good of the many. Government was never set to cater to 'person' but to 'people'. So we have, in my mind, made this problem ourselves. Given your age, I'd be willing to bet that when you went to school, law enforcement was not a part of the school structure. The principals and the teachers ran the school, not the students. Policy was set, you were told what the policy was, including acceptable standards for behavior, and it was adhered to...or else. And if you happened to get your bottom busted at school, you got it again when you got home. Today, if you were to get spanked, you get legal counsel. Education was something that was coveted by people who didn't have a lot, not something viewed as merely another entitlement to be manipulated by the whim of those who seek to input their own values, or lack thereof upon it. Safety and security on the bus? Is that any more of a concern than while in the classroom? Life is a chance encounter with our environment. Bullying has existed throughout time and when you trade freedom for security, you get neither. Yes, I realize we are talking about children. Teach them to take up for themselves. Except schools today suspend both parties. Rewarding the concept of self defense by punishing those who engage in it; re-enforcing the notion that government can do everything for every person. So what happens? There is no encouragement to dream today. Mindless meaningless structure is the substitute. If you've ever used the term 'play date', shame on you. If you have a child under the age of 16 and you've bought them a cell phone, why? This whole notion of instant gratification lends itself to what we have become, or more accurately, what we have failed to become. As individuals, as a people, as a nation. So in my humblest of views, until we remove or change this self serving intraspection of demanding that we are to be served by any and all our requisite instutitions, no matter how ridiculous the demand, and start melding more into what is best for all, rather than what is best for me, and adopting that sort of attitude for governance, things will only continue to accelrate down the slippery slope.
That is some good, well thought out thinking. And I understand your points and agree with it.
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