Trivial Pursuit? Simplifying the Energy Message

For predictable reasons involving human nature and the future inevitability of our cushy lifestyle collapsing, the realities of our society's energy crisis are being side stepped continually while so-called alternatives that are NOT reality based are being touted as the nation's energy salvation. It is uncomfortable, it is frightening, it is doom saying. It is happening as we read this. Over the past hundred and fifty years, our segment of civilization has burned seven hundred years worth of petroleum fuel, at a continuously accelerating rate each year over the last. It is a resource that is almost gone in two aspects. One is the rate at which we consume it and hurl the byproducts into the environment, causing irreparable damage to the earth's climate system that KEEPS US ALIVE! Second is that the real crisis over oil will not begin when the last drop of oil is ceremoniously burned in some weed trimmer, but will occur when more that fifty percent of the populace can no longer afford energy or goods connected with the oil, causing terrible decisions over whether to feed our children or heat the house to keep them from freezing because we cannot afford both any longer. It is gong to get worse. It is not going to get better. Yes, there will be tantalizing fluctuations calculated to give small hope and keep righteous rioters from burning oil companies headquarters and lynching CEO's, but none will have any real substance. All that will serve only to drive financial markets for profit and have no real effect over the long run on the steady price increases and dwindling supply. The bad news, no disrespect to Al Gore, is that even if they miraculously installed some new magical carbon neutral alternative and everyone on earth stopped using oil tomorrow at noon, the system would still crash and the environment would take nearly a thousand years to even begin to approach recovery. The damage that has been done is severe and cannot be listed fully without many pages, so I will mention only a few problems. Massive deforestation of rain and temperate forests, pollution and carbon saturation of our air, pollution of the oceans and over harvesting of them so severely it will lead to probable extinction of most of our food species, and overpopulation to the point that any major crisis in environment will cause catastrophic loss of human life. The really bad news is that there are currently NO real alternatives that are workable on the scale necessary to substitute for oil. Period. Every alternative suggested so far has one or more of several problems preventing it from feasibility. Most are reliant upon petroleum for production of a key component and therefore cannot be a real alternative. Pie in the sky energy theory is unworkable. Solar is out other than small scale home projects for the wealthy. The cells require mining of elements and high energy production costs, as well as a high reliance upon petroleum products in construction. Ever see a wooden solar panel? Ethanol is off the list because the large crop sizes are driven completely by petroleum based fertilizers, transportation and processing equipment, and the fact that all the ethanol producing plants here are coal powered. Coal is the reason we cannot eat a lot of Atlantic fish any longer due to mercury fallout from coal burning plants. Despite the industry attempts to sell the fantasy, there is NO SUCH THING as clean burning coal. Of course this is in addition to the MASSIVE environmental destruction caused by the mining for it. Conservation is a good idea, but oil is still going to run out, period. The gas tank is only so big and we are looking at the end. Nuclear is right out. There is no safe method of storing the most hazardous waste products in existence. Since the elements involved are also quite rare, (besides involving petroleum reliant mining processes to acquire them) building more dangerous nuke plants is not a sane option unless you work for the industry, and in that case it is more safe than cotton candy. Wind power is based upon finely tooled metal machinery, (mining the ore is petroleum reliant, remember?) is expensive, complicated, and would need upkeep such as replacement parts made with that same oil processed metal. Even wires used to transmit electricity are petroleum produced when you consider the plastics for insulation and that fact there are no solar powered metal smelting operations out there. Examples are continually thrown at us from very small experiments that seem positively miraculous until taken in a scale required to feasibly supply a large city, not to mention a national grid. At this point, some clever individual will usually try to insert the old republican oil baron talking point about never underestimating the power of human ingenuity, and that every time this same thing confronted this problem in history someone invented something that saved us all. Uhhh, there is a simple reality check here. There has NEVER been a problem like this in human history, period. This is not a movie where the actor paid to play the good guy inventor comes up with the simple, cheap method of producing unlimited clean energy in a tea cup. Placing all your faith upon a technology that does not yet exist and at this point is not even on the remote horizon is stupid. We had all better face the unpleasant realities that these will happen soon, but there is no definitive pinpointed date: A- we are about to suffer a loss of our energy and food production and distribution systems. B- we are about to suffer the collapse of our economic system. C- we are about to lose our wealthy status on the world. D- We are about to have a massive reduction in our lifestyle, probably a set back to about the 1800's. E- we are about to see a large loss of life resulting from the above. Now is the time to get REAL and begin gardening, preserving food, finding alternative heating and cooking resources on small scales for your family's survival over the next decades or soon the materials to do so will be past acquiring after the system's collapse.

Yesterday in his manic speech at Sturgis McCain yelled something like "we're gonna pump offshore - now! We'll pump here! I figured he was talking about pumping in Sturgis, SD, so why not in Dayton,OH or Cambridge, MA, or St Louis, MO? McCain's energy message is its own lampoon: "Pump!" Here's a possible commercial: A guy runs out of gas in his SUV. He calmly gets out on the side of the road, assembles a short drill rig that he has stowed in the back of his vehicle, and starts drilling right on the roadside. A voiceover explains McCain's simplistic "energy plan"