Powell on the National Guard

"D. Strang" wrote in message
news:FAIZb.9588$Ru5.192@okepread03...
"George Z. Bush" wrote

Right now Freedom runs on oil. We tried nuclear, and bio-fuels, and
until we get a Congress willing to go Hydrogen in 10 years, (instead of
another wasted trip to the Moon, or Mar's), then we will all burn in hell.

We have an energy policy that is based on depletion.

Really? In that case, you won't have any problem explaining to those of us
who
still don't get it why, when our oil supply is recognizably being depleted
without replenishment, we are (1) still manufacturing and selling
gas-guzzling
SUVs and (2) why we haven't required every vehicle on our roads to be able
to
get 40 or 50 mpg as a prerequisite for getting a license plate.

We are at the top of the production curve. While it seems there is no end to
the
fossil fuel, .....

You must be pretty young to forget that, while Jimmy Carter was president, the
fragility of our oil supply was recognized to the point that the addition of
ethanol to gasoline was initiated in an effort to stretch our resources. It's
disingenuous to suggest that our shrinking oil supplies come as a shock to us.
We've been aware of it for a long time, if you count a quarter century or so a
long time.

.......our rate of consumption, and there being a fixed quantity of reserves,
means depletion. We can slow production, but as the population increases,
then
consumption increases. SUV's sales are based on cheap credit, not oil. I
don't
know of any neighbor who owns their vehicle......

Yours must indeed be an unusual community where neighbors discuss whether or not
they buy their cars for cash or on credit. Where I live, that's considered
personal, and the only way you can find out is to specifically ask, at risk of
offending a neighbor by your nosiness and being told to MYOB.

........No one knows what a dollars worth, but we know that as the Euro goes
up, the dollar
goes down, and 70% of our dollars are overseas. We are about as set-up as we
were before the depression hit.

I'm not sure I follow the relevance of all this. I guess my noodle is running
on fumes, because I haven't read your explanation of why, with an apparently
dwindling oil supply, we still haven't yet adopted the two conservation measures
I suggested above.

It's entirely possible that, in the light of day, we may learn that our
energy
policy is aimed at the protection of certain economic interests first,
rather
than the nation's best interests. We may find out one of these days.

The energy policy is a compromise between investment in the future, and
the status-quo.

How do we know it's a compromise when we don't know which alternatives, if any,
were investigated and evaluated while the policy was being formulated?

We could really put a dent in oil imports, if we invested in non-fossil based
deployment. Such an investment would be a 30% tax write-off for home
developments that have generation facilities (solar, thermal, biodiesel, etc).

Our ethanol experience suggests much wishful thinking on your part,
unfortunately for us all.

George Z.