PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings

Maybe this is five days late. . .

Someone hit me on the left side of the head yesterday, so today’s post is being written by my right side.

Insightful critics of renewables point out that gasoline works for transportation. Switching to something else will require a massive investment in new filling stations. The efficiency of any potential replacement is untested on a large scale.

The regulatory environment is hostile for using solar-only fuel-free vehicles with unlimited range on the highways, because of well considered safety reasons. Slow moving pathetic scooters incite righteous road rage in affluent sports car owners, for example. Maybe you think we could switch to ATV designs that don’t need paved roads. Nope, the authorities are wisely cracking down on off highway vehicles in order to protect the trackless barren wastes.

We are only in the Middle East to selflessly create bastions of Democracy in our name for that tumultuous region. Thank you for your service. Most of the petroleum used in the U.S. comes from Canada and Mexico. If only we could explore and develop oil within U.S. borders, we’d be sitting pretty.

Beware of “alternative energy” hippie hucksters trying to mooch tax money, peak oil paranoids partying about petroleum’s price pinnacle, and militia types who don’t want to contribute their fair share to the public good. All those malcontents would have us head for the hills and plant subsistence gardens or forage wild food plants. But common sense tells us that being connected to the blessedly convenient grid for a nominal monthly charge among cozy fellow commuters in fairly priced city real estate is the reasonable way God intended for us to live.

Why have gas prices soared in recent years? Is it “peak oil” finally catching up with us? An oil company conspiracy to throttle back production and thus increase profit per unit sale? Is it because the Federal Reserve has inflated the currency to rescue the poor starving bankers from bad investments to such an extent that Euros and Mexican Pesos are being accepted at stores in some U.S. cities?

Nope. It’s all the fault of evil foreigners. China, the place with five times our population where they make all our stuff, has the audacity to possibly dump our currency just because it’s becoming worthless. Those greedy Asian devils want to actually be paid for some reason and their irresponsible threats are making imports less affordable for Americans.

So if it costs more than your rent or mortgage to fill the tank every month, that’s just the price of freedom. Pay your ten bucks per gallon and nobody will get hurt.

For those Chicken Littles out there complaining about global warming, consider that a generation ago the problem was supposed to be global cooling. While the AGW skeptic’s solar cloud formation theory is supposedly debunked, the prediction this particular year is more global cooling “due to weather” which just happens to also be a solar sunspot minimum after cycle 23 ended and before 24 is due to kick in. Coincidence? I think not. But rest assured, in the long run we’re promised ultimate certain doom from human generated CO2 warming again. Why can’t these hysterical ninnies make up their minds?

And if scaremongering news about polar bears, melting ice sheets, lakes drying up and recent food riots isn’t distressing enough, Ted Turner went beyond the pale by predicting cannibalism thanks to shortages caused by global warming. That stirred up talk in the blogosphere about having to go back on the Soylent Green diet again. All this blather must have been too much for Charlton Heston. May he rest in peace.

So fine. Believe that the sky is falling. See if I care. The obvious answer is to model our society’s energy (but not health care) policy on your beloved France. We could switch over to large-scale nuclear power. No more global warming! Believe it or else.

Let’s not hear any more talk about smaller, more local off-grid “alternatives.” We can add “carbon neutral” biofuels, wind belts and turbines, hydropower, geothermal, ocean wave and solar energy collectors to other failed ideas such as numerology and astrology.

Keep the economies of scale at the commanding heights where they belong so our exalted masters can protect us. Ask not what your oil company can do for you, but what you can do for your company.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Carbon Dioxide, Energy, Freedom, Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.