Missing the Boat-1 of 2

Posted by LK on 10/27/08 • Categorized as Energy: alt and conventional, Foreign Policy, Health and Science, Personal, The Economy and Markets

Common sense has abandoned ship. Commentators left and right, from the left and right, can’t see the forest for the trees. Even with their Ivy League spectacles on.

Exhibit A:

The price of gasoline is coming down. Zip-A-Dee-Freakin’-Doo-Dah. A de facto tax break. Excellent stuff when taken by its lonesome.

Let’s zoom out a bit.

The hue and cry for alternative ways to power our nation has diminished to near silence. Four dollar gas has conditioned us to welcome three dollar gas, which a year ago was seen as an intense burden.

So much for long term considerations like freeing ourselves from the geopolitical need to make nice to folks who despise us. So much for developing the technology to give us clout in a post fossil fuel world. So much for cutting back on the emission of carbon dioxide. Even if you don’t buy into man-made global warming, CO2 isn’t a great substance to be pumping into the oxygen tent we call our atmosphere.

It’s going to be a lot harder to convince politicians to think further ahead than their noses and subsidize the future while their constituents are screaming in the present tense. And are in the present, tense.

Guaranteed that paradoxically, while the Chinese are polluting up a storm, they’ll also be working 24/7/365 until they’ve figured out how to be the first to reach energy self-sufficiency.

When we plan at all, we plan in weeks, maybe months. The Chinese plan in decades. It’s ironic that they used to plan in centuries, but their shortsighted Western trading partners have been a bad influence.

Maybe if this keeps up they’ll be as tunnel-visioned as we are by 2020 or so.

note: exhibit B will follow within the next few days. LK