America's Energy Policy

Picture by R.J.Matson

Does America even HAVE an energy policy?? I don't think we do, but we sure ought to! Oh sure, we hear a lot about weaning ourselves off foreign oil, but I don't see that happening--now or in my lifetime. There's a big fight about drilling in new places and plenty of discussion about making gas out of corn, but there is no clear cut path and no concrete energy policy. Well, after a little thought, I've decided to lay out my own energy policy, THE AVERAGE AMERICAN Energy Policy!

First, the production of electricity should not use any fossil fuel except coal. Save the oil, gas, propane, natural gas, etc for other purposes. I'm not talking today, but as soon as possible. The absolute best practices for producing electricity is to use non-fuel methods. Hydro power, wind power, solar power, and geothermal power all need NO fuel! They give off NO carbon gas emmissions! They are the absolute cleanest ways to create electricity. I really don't care if canoeists and kayakers have to make more portages between shorter stretches of river. That's a small price to pay for the energy being wasted with all that free running water. I'd love to see hundreds or thousands of wind generators on the mountain tops. I don't see them as ugly, on the contrary, they are the look of money! Solar panels all over the place, GREAT! Tap into "Old Faithful" and any other place we can get some megawatts out of the earth's free geothermal energy.

Other acceptable ways to generate electricity use fuel. Renewable fuel is the prefered fuel. Biomass is way underutilized. I'm sure we can spare a lot more trees, at least in some parts of the country. So what if we all have to settle for artificial x-mas trees? There's a LOT of methane gas being emitted from our landfills. Is your community capturing that free fuel? If not, WHY NOT? Nuclear power has come a long way, but we hardly remember how to build them any more. The technology is far advanced since we last built a plant. Many other countries have surpassed us in this arena. Let's get the lead out of our asses and start building them! We have a s###load of coal. Find a way to burn it cleaner and use it! I'm sure you can come up with even more ways to produce electricity without using oil, gas etc. List them in the comments section please. Oh, here's one. We need to find a way to capture the hot air being emitted every day by our politicians, of both parties! Talk about a waste of energy!

Surprisingly, a large portion of our petroleum useage goes to produce plastics and other items not usually associated with oil. There are things we can do to cut down on this problem. Stop asking for plastic bags at the store under the misguided idea that this is best for the environment. It isn't! Screw the tree-huggers, ask for paper! Do you really need more than one credit card? You're less likely to get in financial trouble with just one! I'll bet your kids would do just fine with about 1/4 of the plastic toys they have. Quit buying so much junk from China! Hey, the bottom line is that plastic sucks. Make stuff to last like in the "old days"!

This post is longer than I first anticipated, so I guess I'll cut it off here and cover the heat and vehicle energy needs later.

One last thing before I go. The picture at the top of this post is just exactly how a lot of the world's people see us. No wonder they hate us! It was meant as humor, but it really isn't! We should be ashamed of this whole ethanol scam. It costs more to produce then it saves!

Picture by Steve Breen.