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!!!
