Realities of the Oil Spill

I can’t begin to imagine the devastating feelings experienced by our Gulf neighbors to the east. The closest experience I’ve had to such was back in my early fifties when I got crossways with a supervisor. I thought I was going to lose my job, and I almost panicked, wondering where a fifty-something would find work. And when I did, I knew my salary would be nothing like my current one.

Fear, desperation, panic—I felt them, but nowhere the degree those affected by the oil spill feel them. To a small degree, I can imagine what it would be like to see my whole way of life destroyed.

Where would I go? What would I do?

Fishing the Gulf can be profitable, but many fathers of those businesses have encouraged their children to find other work. They were well aware of the vagaries of such a career. This spill is one of those unexpected disasters, creating a domino effect among subsidiary businesses and their supporting communities.

And the president’s knee-jerk moratorium, a result of his lack of knowledge, both personal and advisory, of the social and business culture of the Gulf Coast, exacerbated the problem. Fortunately a judge overturned it, but then old Barrack appealed that order.

This was the first major spill since Valdez in eighty-nine and Ixtoc back in seventy-nine. They don’t happen every day. Unfortunately when they do, they usher in catastrophic results.

We’ll get through this, but not for a long, long time.

Like it or not, fossil fuels are our basic energy source. We depend on them. Our leaders (a loose use of the word) in Washington have for several administrations promised to do something about clean energy. They haven’t even tried.

Sure, all this ‘green’ talk sounds great, but if there is any idiot out there who believes all this clean energy nonsense is going to come about in the next five years, and produce all the jobs Barack Hussien Obama, i.e. Barry Soetoro, claims, then you and the President have been smoking something.

Fossil fuels provide sixty-six percent of the world’s electricity. If the country wants clean energy, why not turn to the one source we could have quickly, at least in a relative sense, nuclear.

Currently, nuclear power produces only nineteen percent of the electricity we consume. Wimpy France, where six Frenchman couldn’t fight their way out of a wet Kleenex, produces eighty-percent of its electrical energy from nuclear plants. Maybe there’s something in the air over there that makes them wimpy, but I doubt it is the nuclear emissions.

See for yourself. The country hasn’t blown up or become radioactive like the wacko environmentalists want you to think.

What does nuclear power have to do with that automobile sitting in your drive? Stop and think. What if there were enough inexpensive nuclear electricity not only to power your house, but your car, your boat, and your RV?

Far-fetched? Not as much as you might think.

Right now, those electrical hybrids are rich-people cars. We middle class consumers, for whom forty thousand for a car is outrageous, still rely on gasoline refined from demon oil.

But if enough nuclear-generated electricy were available, prices would drop. Technology streamlined computers and peripherals over the last twenty years. What happened? Prices dropped. Don’t tell me they can’t do the same with automobiles if the incentive is right.

Corporations will continue to refine and develop technology for products Americans want, and if there is enough demand for fairly priced items utilizing electricity, prices will drop.

Now, I didn’t go to Harvard. I’m not considered brilliant. I didn’t win the Nobel before I earned it, but I’m smart enough to realize that if we stop drilling for oil before all of the pie-in-the-sky solutions are actually operating, we’ll not only import more oil, but will double or even triple the price of gasoline.

Solar generated electricity is intriguing. I wouldn’t mind it, but I don’t have an extra eighty thousand lying about to put in such a system.

Face it. We need oil. Accidents happen, tragic accidents. Those responsible should pay.

The problem is though, just how do you put a price on one’s lifetime?

www.kentconwell.blogspot.com