Debate over the last several weeks during which gasoline prices soared past $3.00 has pretty well fixed in the public mind the notion that the cheap energy party is over. This is not to say that gasoline prices will not retreat from time to time but that the trend is and ever will be upward. The purpose of this posting is to skewer anti-tax Republicans and kick more than a few green butts.
Since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, all thoughtful analysts knew this day was coming. That it might have held off for another decade or so is about all the wiggle room available for those resisting tighter energy conservation standards or some form of energy taxes. But the day is here with a vengeance and we can do nothing about our failure to prepare as we should have other than to whine as the numbers on the pump whirr past $30.00 each time we feed old Dobbin.
Democrats were the party of taxation and every time one of the poor fools stepped up to the plate with the notion that we should raise gasoline taxes by fifty cents or a dollar a gallon, the jackass was laughed at by our Republican supply side friends and the tax and spend liberal had to recant or face defeat.
But the market does not back down in the face of such chuckling and is a far harder task master. And it’s too late for a fifty cent boost in gas prices; the McMansions and Hummers have all been built, bought and stocked. The spaces to be heated and cooled are enormous and the number of people occupying them is miniscule. The distances to employment are long and the thirst of the Sherman tanks protecting Mom and Dick and Jane as they cruise to ball games is equal to that of camels after long desert crossings.
We’ve got the president finally pounding on the oil barons. Republicans who readily bowed, scraped and nodded knowingly as the royals explained the nature of markets for simpleton Democrat lawmakers are now seeking cover by scapegoating their former heroes. The barons and their American automobile manufacturing counterparts are now the ones proclaiming everything is beyond their control. Of course, they led the cavalry in outflanking the greens who sought such crimes as taxes on energy.
To satisfy the bloodlust, the barons will have to retire a few more front men to lives of luxury in order to get past the months leading up to the November election so that a couple of more marginal Republican seats in Congress can be saved, but the ousted oilmen can lick their wounds as they sail their energy efficient fifty foot sail boats across Nantucket Sound. They can lament their fate and console themselves by restating to their plutocrat friends just how ignorant the voters are.
As for the greens, they’re against everything that isn’t `natural’. How quaint. Every small break in their ranks by a member who even hints that the community ought to revisit its revulsion of nuclear power brings forth odious comparisons with Benedict Arnold. Well they damn well better get with the nukes. Renewable energy will take a generation to ease our pain in the market, and cheap energy will not be coming from any corn field now or ever. Cheap is done! Finished! Alternate energy is going to be expensive and will come on line only as the price of petroleum continues toward the stratosphere.
Stories on nuclear power are surfacing with greater regularity these days, and I’m linking to one from today’s New York Times. It takes a decade or more to build a plant, so those who are opposed to such sitings better begin to examine their opposition to these facilities before the price of power slows our economy and the emissions from the coal fired behemoths further raise the hackles of our green friends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/opinion/26sweet.html?ex=1146715200&en=f0552a9cdc5f4e1f&ei=5070&emc=eta1
We’ve got three hundred million people just beginning to realize that we’re facing a long painful switch away from cheap oil and toward EXPENSIVE alternatives. Our economy cannot sustain purism from right or left. We have to have reasonable solutions as we become conscious of what the hard left and right have done to us.
Vote against the Republicans in the fall and against left leaning Democrats thereafter. Divided centrist government is an absolute must as the world careers wildly beyond our control.
Blog on!
Wild Bill
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Do you really think Pres. Bush is pounding on the Oil Baron? I think your wrong as he is one of them. It's still just lip service. I am all for the oil companies posting profits as that is the American way but record profits? THey can bite my shorts. He said that he is investigating. Yeah like he investigated the leaks from the CIA? It took them months to figure out it was HIM. I think you need to do a little more research on his pounding...it will be more like a tap on the wrist.
Bill, Clearly your observation that the days of relatively inexpensive oil in this country are gone! In a way, it's surprising it has taken so long. It has been evident, as you say, for decades.
But for people like me, a real non-scientist, and one who has sadly not kept up at all with what's what TODAY in nuclear power, what do you say about the detris from nuclear power? The NY Times you cross-referenced talks about a vastly decreased chance of a Chernobyl in the US, but what about the nuclear waste? What do we do with it? To someone born in 1940 and bred on the fear of the never-ending destructive power of the stuff, what do you say?
Post a Comment