Energy Rocks Our World
Affordable, reliable energy – a big reason most children now make it to adulthood.
Back in 1990, green activist David Suzuki had this to say about human beings: there are too many of us; we consume too much; we pollute too much…civilization on this planet can last only another 10 years, etc.
Similarly, the head of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, declared that we can’t continue to consume our way to prosperity. He could not be more mistaken.
For these dark souls, humans are a plague on the planet. A pack of coyotes killing a horse – by lunging at its throat, according to a recent story in my local newspaper – is perfectly natural. But human consumption is apparently greedy and stupid.
Well on this lovely morning in June I’d like to suggest an alternative way of looking at things. A gent in the UK named Ralph Tittley has produced a fabulous one-minute video titled Work. Rest. Play. It’s an entry in a contest, the details of which are intriguing in themselves and may be seen here.
Here’s the winning video from that contest, “Energy means everything.” Watch this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnCJgsHyI2g&feature=player_embedded
I wish every child who has, in recent years, been subjected to multiple viewings of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had also been shown this short video. Because, for the vast majority of every 24 hours, we humans are not greedy and stupid. We are dedicated, smart, and creative. We build schools and hospitals. We write plays and music and poetry. On the other hand, Al Gore’s movie won an Oscar and a partial Nobel Peace Prize and put millions of dollars in Al Gore’s wallet, but it does nothing whatsoever for the development of mankind or the planet. In fact, a UK court requires that a rebuttal film be shown whenever An Inconvenient Truth is shown. Because of the number of false and misleading claims made by Gore in his movie, the court decided the film was propaganda and false advertising.
Humans have tried for decades and centuries to liberate ourselves – and our children – from drudgery. That journey would not have been possible without ready access to reliable energy. It runs the factories that manufacture affordable housing, clothing, and medicine. It is essential to growing and transporting adequate amounts of food.
This world, lest we forget, is a perilous place. Click here to jump to a listing on Amazon.com for Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, which appeared in 1762. Type “die before their eighth year” into the search box, including the quotes, and you’ll be taken to a passage that reads:
“One half of the children who are born die before their eighth year…This is nature’s law; why contradict it?”
The reason this so-called natural law no longer applies is because affordable energy now rocks our world. Children born today have a better chance than ever of living a rewarding, fulfilling life – of becoming surgeons or scientists or musicians.
That is something to celebrate.
In 1798 Thomas Malthus wrote about overpopulation by humans and predicted that humans would starve and deplete the earth of resources. Successive generations of intellectuals picked up and followed his concept to the present day. In the 1960’s and 1970’s the book The Population Bomb updated Malthus and enlightened all the flower children, but like Malthus none of the predictions have happened. We now have The Club of Rome, Al Gore, the entire Obama administration and 192 nations and the United Nations spending more than $100 billion just since 2008 to achieve what they claim to be sustainable development which includes for them population control, climate change, UN control of the oceans, cities and all land organized and planned by global treaties (UN Agenda 21) and more. But Malthus and his followers have been proven wrong over and over again for centuries by human ability to innovate and optimize.
Obama’s Secretary of Department Energy Dr. Steven Chu is one of those neo-Malthusians. A Nobel Prize winner and green energy proponent, he supports the idea that gasoline in in the U.S. should be as expensive as Europe’s. But Europe has almost no oil and America has the world’s largest known reserves of oil and gas. To make the neo-Malthusian predictions self-fulfilling, Chu, Obama and his administration have prohibited development of most of the energy containing lands in the U.S. meanwhile preaching energy and climate nonsense…1984 doublespeak.
Here is a quote by a writer attempting to bring Joe six pack common sense into the issue…
“Incorporating a comprehensive energy policy is a non-partisan no-brainer which most Americans would wholeheartedly embrace, given they were allowed to embrace it — voluntarily. Instead, the administration is bent on assuming a parental role in our lives, and Dr. Chu seems to take this role quite seriously. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Chu likened the American public to teenagers when he said, “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act” and must “really understand in their core how important this issue is.”
“All this coming from the green energy zealot who gave us the Solyndra debacle. Americans are not the senseless teenagers Dr. Chu implies. We may not have as many degrees hanging on our walls, but we are steeped in common sense, and understand that raising gas prices “to the levels of Europe” is not a smart move.” http://townhall.com/columnists/susanbrown/2012/03/05/energy_secretary_chu_should_resign/page/full/
The policies of the Obama administration, the DOE, the DOI, EPA et al are without doubt reducing the supply of energy in the U.S. Taxes on energy and energy companies compound the problem by increasing the price to consumers. Subsidies and regulations requiring ethanol in gasoline and use of biofuels further increase costs while reducing mileage and increasing pollution. Obama has openly stated that his policies will cause energy prices to “skyrocket,”which also means that economic growth and productivity will crash. That is the modeAmerica and the world is in today. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency of the Obama administration, predicts essentially flat employment out to 2035 where the forecast ended; they are being optimistic unless there is a significant regime change.
Obama is not in a political position to evolve a reversed course on energy, as he has on the deficit spending, gay marriage, indefinite detention of Americans by the military without trial, and just last week permitting 800,000 illegal alien children to obtain work visas in America. Obama is fully committed to his environmental/energy ideology with no way to reverse course.
Government (national and supranational) and big oil collude and collaborate to reduce supply (amidst plentiful reserves) so that oil prices move ever higher. When oil company profits are higher, governments take in more tax revenue. Higher nominal prices are the source of political power. More tax revenue means more money to distribute to cronies. Obama bows to the Saudi King and George Bush kisses his ring…not because the Saudi have the most oil, but because the Saudis will push up or down supplies and prices based on political expediency. Saudi royalty is grateful for the market share and profits they achieve because U.S. politicians keep U.S. oil and gas off the market. If there were a free market in oil, gas and coal, prices would be much lower and supply and demand would be determined by the market. Politics determines the energy market today.
I hope Romney is different, but so far the evidence appears otherwise. Romney says he is ready to re-build the military to defend “American interests” in the middle east … meaning the oil supply routes and the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea. The U.S. federal government holds more than 90% of U.S.lands are off-limits for oil and gas development. America does not need middle eastern oil and its OPEC cartel price/supply controls and we certainly do not need to spend money and lives defending it. The best thing American could do for national defense and for our economy is to develop gas, oil, coal, nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power in America. But that would reduce the power of and political donations to American politicians and the global cabal between bankers, governments and supranational entities like the UN, and oil.
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