I have mixed feelings about the Gulf oil spill. I have been a conservative, and a conservationist all my life. I drove a car that got thirty miles to a gallon of gas when gas cost eighteen cents a gallon. People thought I was nuts. My philosophy was that I was polluting less because I was consuming less. My carbon footprint in 1961 was lower than that of the most leftwing radical greenies of 2010. Therefore, I see the huge oil spill in the Gulf as one of the worst tragedies of the planet.
I blame the spill on the Conservationists who have been forcing oil companies to drill in deep water, and I blame the lousy economy on the law passed by Congress to give everyone in America a house. The difference between these two tragedies is that the Government will get away with demonizing the oil companies, but they will never take responsibility for their law making errors.
The other side of the spill that causes my dilemma are these facts: I love to drive my car, I love my house air-conditioned, I love to turn on my computer, I love fresh vegetables and fruits in the middle of winter, I love sitting in a warm house during cold weather, I love being able to communicate with my friends, and I love watching TV. All of my love affairs rely on energy. When it comes to choosing between pelicans soaked in oil and losing my loves, the pelican will lose every time. I am, you see, a practical conservationist.
Americans need only take a drive onto an Interstate highway on any day of the week, and ask themselves the following question, what would happen if the entire world ran out of gas on the same day? How would you get home from where your car stopped? Would home be worth going to? How long would it be before people began killing each other for a meal?
People are criticizing President Obama for the way he has handled the spill. What does he know about an oil leak under five thousand feet of water? His teleprompter will not work at that depth. I am amazed that BP has such an amazing robot with a live video that can work by remote control at that site. If Obama is deserving of criticism, it is for his lack of reaction to give Louisiana an okay to create barrier islands offshore. He could have and should have given the okay on day one. He didn’t and has only allowed a fraction of the barriers. Why? He is waiting for an environmental impact study to determine the harm the barriers would create. Stupid, or what? The decision is a no brainer in the middle of the worst ecological disaster ever to hit the world.
One thing Obama has jumped on quickly is to use the spill as a great reason for pushing the Cap and Trade bill through Congress. He is convinced that by imposing this stupid law on us, that we will rush to develop new forms of energy. He truly believes the world will be a better place if the USA devolves backwards a hundred and fifty years to meet the status of Third World Nations. If only his brain could assimilate the notion that given a profit motive, a free capitalist world would rush to develop new forms of energy. Instead, he is thinking like a Cro-Magnon man.
Here is a hot investment tip for everyone in America; buy donkeys and shovels. Donkeys are the only form of clean energy that will evolve from this administration’s policies. Oh, the shovels are for picking up the clean carbon free donkey shit that will be knee-deep.
Filed under: Cartoons, Conservative, economy, Government, politics | Tagged: Cap and Trade, Clean Energy, EPA, Obama, Oil |
Donkey’s (and cattle and horses and other livestock) might be carbon free, but they sure aren’t methane free, which in terms of global warming is a far more potent green house gas than Co2. And while Co2 is odorless, colorless and tasteless, methane is missing at least one of those qualities!
Which in the end tells us one thing – Obama et al aren’t serious about the practical solutions, only the political ramifications.
And you are dead on about the free market providing the next energy source. The reason we switched from wood to manure to coal to oil to gas isn’t because we ran out of the previous resource or a government told us too. We did it because the next energy source was better – more powerful, cleaner, more plentiful – and the market rewarded the new technologies that allowed the use of a new energy source. For now, the market is quite clear that ‘alternative energy’ is not a reasonable alternative.
I have little sympathy for BP in all this. They have been spending the past two decades talking and funding left wing environmentalism while running up a horrible track record. They truly became a post-modern corporation where what they say became more important than what they produced – akin to Bill Clinton who got a pass from the feminist groups for his behavior based on his saying all the right things, while not exactly putting it into action in his personal life.