I have been blogging on this topic for some time and still don't seem to have gotten thru. To night in the debate between Obama and Romney, it will come up again and "both" will agree. That is the problem. It seems that no one wants to really look at the concept of "energy independence" with an open mind. Open mouth maybe, but not with an open mind. Back on 10/6/2012 I put forward one of my best arguments against the concept of "energy independence" and no one commented one way or the other. Does that mean you are not reading these blogs or does it mean you agree with the talking heads?
The price of energy like the price of food is only a question of whether or not you can afford the price. That is it and that is what we should be talking about. We all know that wind and solar energy is going to cost at least 10 times that from either oil, gas or coal. We also know that we have enough oil, gas and coal for most of our energy requirements so why are we spending our wealth on wind and solar that both cost so much? Is it to become "energy independent"? We all know that finding a little more oil is "not" going to affect the world price of oil.
Just what are our alternatives and what are their end affects? That is what we should be looking at, so here they are:
(1) Find more oil and gas
That would be just fine, but it will not make the price of energy go down. Only the world price for oil will make that happen. We will never find enough oil and gas here to make us totally independent on imports. (Not a solution)
(2) Invest more in wind and solar
These now account for less than 2% of our energy needs and cost us 10 times that of coal. No one is claiming that we will ever have enough wealth to become energy independent by investing in wind and solar energy, so why do we keep doing it? (Not a solution)
(3) Work harder and become more productive like China
This will not produce any more energy, but it will make us wealthy enough to be able to buy oil when no one else has the money. (Only solution)
In the end, a lot of humans around the world are going to have to go without oil and other forms of energy because they can not afford to pay for them. When they can't afford energy, the next thing is that they will not be able to afford "food" either. In the end, a lot of people are going to starve. If that is the case, how can we be sure that we are not one of those? Easy. Don't squander our wealth on wind and solar energy and work harder, smarter and become more productive. It is not going to be long before we will not be able to afford our expensive form of health care. As we trim down and eliminate those things that we will not be able to afford, what will they be? It is going to happen and energy is just the most visible since it is in every thing that adds to the quality of life. The bottom line is that the quality of life is going to keep getting more expensive and the only way that we will be able to hold our own against the rest of the world is to be more productive and for the most part, that means better education and efficient use of expensive energy.
Along that line, how do you think the over sized and expensive homes that we have built over the past 30 or 40 years stack up? Note also, that many were built with government sponsorship. Note also, how our SAT scores have been going down for the last 40 years or how we rank no better than 25th in terms of education. Have we been doing the right things to assure that our children will be able to survive in the future? Oh!, I forgot, we are saving the world from "Global Warming". When there is no oil to burn and most of the people have died from starvation, who will be generating all the pollution that is supposed to cause "Global Warming"? Most of us humans will have died off from other causes before "Global Warming" becomes an issue. Are we stupid or what?
