The Panacea of the Oil Free Economy

-By Dan Scott

The one thing we can credit liberals for is their very creative minds. They have this ability to imagine whimsically how the world can be refashioned to suite their various constituencies and accompanying agendas. In all of these lofty goals liberals are extremely adept at selling a goal by glossing over the negative consequences of their advocacy. In glossing over the negatives, they sell the goal as having magical abilities to solve all kinds of problems, in the real world we call this a panacea. Panaceas are born of wishful thinking by people who lack the ability, knowledge, skill or education to come up with practical solutions. One such liberal panacea is the oil free economy advocated by the environmentalists.

Environmentalists these days are people who see any human impact upon nature as a despoiling of it. They tend also to believe they, being the stewards of the planet’s ecology, have the right to dictate, according to their knowledge, what is good or bad. More often than not, this knowledge is more of a display of their ignorance of nature, not the wisdom of understanding. Knowledge and wisdom are not the same, nor does it automatically follow with the accumulation of knowledge that wisdom results. Knowledge without wisdom is ignorance and when combined with self-righteousness results in arrogance. One of the foremost points of ignorance by environmentalists is that nature is static, that is what we see today is what nature intends to be there tomorrow, next year, the next decade, a hundred years from now and has always been so in the past. Nature demonstrates via weather it is constantly changing, climate likewise is not static in nature. Any cursory research of climate for the last 100,000 years reveals that it does CHANGE quite dramatically from the ice age to warm periods (interglacials) such as we now enjoy. This is also true of the ocean level where at the end of the last ice age it was some 450 feet lower than it was today. How many wildlife habitats were drowned by the rising of the oceans? It seems nature is all about CHANGE and destructive at that.

Environmentalists do not handle CHANGE very well, they seek the status quo. Frequently, we see the advocacy based on the so called knowledge of the environmentalists leading to unintended consequences. The fires in California would be a good example of the environmentalist ignorance of nature. For years environmentalists insisted under the mistaken notion that fire was bad for nature as though it were some kind of destructive aberration. Therefore all the fires from lightning strikes were put out immediately regardless if there was a threat to property or not. What was the result? Massive intense fires from not allowing the periodic burn up of kindling accumulation on the forest floor and scrub areas. Their insistence was so overdone to the point that even clearing of dead brush by homeowners was forbidden. This was all under the name of preserving the environment by means of the status quo and look what happened.

Environmentalists believe that anything we humans put in the air is bad and that anything nature puts in the air is good as though bad or good is dependent on the source of the emission and not the effects or cycle of the emission. Volcanoes, an emission source of nature put out CO2 and smog (called VOG). Not all pollution is anthropomorphic in origin, nature is also a polluter. See hawaii.gov and ejeafche.uvigo.es. The other source of smog besides volcanoes is forest fires. “The Yukon wildfires in June to August 2004 added about 30 billion kilograms of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere – about as much as was released by human-related activities in the continental U.S. during the same period, the scientists said.” Can you imagine the amount of smog and air pollution the fires in CA have caused? Ironic when you consider the situation that made it far worse than it should have been was due to the meddling by so called knowledgeable environmentalists.

None of this is to say that mankind through his activities should indiscriminately dump garbage in the air, water or ground as was done in the old Soviet Union and now in China. No one, including conservatives want to breathe dirty air, drink filthy water or have contaminated soil to play on for their kids. We should however recognize two very important points, one is proportionality of emissions and the other is all creatures impact the environment in some disproportionate way. Sounds contradictory? At best estimates, nature dumps about 95% of the CO2 created into the atmosphere every year with mankind doing the remainder of around 5%. One can not call 5% of the contribution of CO2 – pollution when 95% of the very same compound is emitted by nature indiscriminately. The example of disportionality would be wetlands (ecosystem), termites, cattle and bison, rice, these creatures disportionally emit methane into the air in far greater amounts than all other parts of nature. Mankind’s emissions are however much larger compared to them based on current estimates that are still evolving as we learn more about the environment. These creatures and wetlands ecosystem have been emitting methane since their inception in nature, even the oceans emit methane. What makes methane or CO2 for that matter more of a problem now than at all other times?

And who or what determines if such emissions are harmful? Mankind? The Vostok ice cores tell a very different story as to where these levels were “normal”. Temperature, methane and CO2 peaked 140,000 years ago at a much higher level just before the beginning of the last ice age.

In fact, every creature including plants in nature affects nature in some disportionate way, so why is mankind any different? When the bison roamed the North American plains by the millions was their trampling of the ground any better for the grass, prairie dogs and gophers than cattle? Did they emit any less methane? Did they clean up after relieving themselves? The ecosystem was left to clean up their waste. However, nature was not a victim of the bison’s thoughtless and indiscriminate use of the environment, the bison “were” the environment. They by their very existence and activity shaped the ecosystem which is no different than mankind. One could say the same thing of termite colonies despoiling the air with their massive methane emissions, shall we bulldoze the termite mounds of Africa or fill in all the wetlands to save the planet??? Absurd.

Every plant and animal, including mankind, emits waste in the form of gases, liquids and solids. Which brings us to the most obvious and most often obfuscated truth in nature, one creature’s waste is another creature’s food (energy source) or fertilizer. The ecosystem or nature is in the very act of recycling or reusing the waste of its constituent parts. Why would a landfill be viewed any differently than oil and natural gas trapped underground? Both also create emissions into the environment via seeps. Nature is not some rock, it is a transitive system in constant motion. It is a question of balance and carrying capacity at any given time. Nature without mankind’s presence is not immune to seeming imbalances, e.g. the Guano Coast of Chile & Peru, where millions of birds deposit their droppings. The amount of bird droppings in such a concentrated area makes this part of Chile and Peru a toxic wasteland to all but the most hardy of creatures, but that’s nature. Mankind mined the guano for fertilizer and literally shipped it around the world, was his act unnatural?

The idea that mankind is not apart of nature or that his emissions from his activities are not part of nature, thus “unnatural” is a false construct. The simple cataloging of one species effects upon the ecosystem to the exclusion of all others is a demonstration of knowledge based ignorance from an egocentric view of the world. In the end, an ecological balance is the continual response of all parts to each other and there is no perfect balance of the status quo, it is constantly CHANGING. Mankind is apart of that ecosystem, everything adjusts/adapts to him and Mankind adjusts/adapts to the ecosystem, that’s nature. Merely walking down a path causes a CHANGE in the ecosystem response, that path you’re walking on was placed there by removing plant species and disturbing the ground to create it. It doesn’t matter if it is a simple footpath created by trampling the ground by numerous individuals (mankind or animal) or if it was constructed using stone and asphalt. To call something natural because a non-human made it or emitted it is sophistry.

So based on the sophistry of Green movement, mankind is not a part of nature, and therefore his actions are unnatural. A panacea has been constructed to mollify the extremist environmentalist’s guilt of their despoiling of nature by their mere existence. This panacea is called the Oil Free Economy, where the use of oil and natural gas which was sequestered in the earth from times past is some unnatural act despoiling the mother earth (Gaia) itself. It’s not enough to for environmentalists to live according to this lifestyle but they insist all mankind must live this way as well as though the ecological balance will magically restore itself to a setting as if mankind didn’t exist.

We are told alternative energy is the yellow brick road to this panacea. Al Gore recently gave a challenge for the US to have all it’s electricity made without oil and natural gas by primarily using solar, wind and geothermal. All of the suggested solutions are undependable or unsustainably high priced energy substitutes for oil. The consequence of such an advocacy by Al Gore to the next President is to increase the cost of living by attempting to achieve the panacea of going oil free.

Al Gore suggests we should spend literally trillions of dollars (by his own admission) because we would have spent them anyway? Really? If it would cost just as much to build an alternative energy plant versus similar sized output coal fired plant then why aren’t they doing that now without needing massive government subsidies??? Alternative energy would have been used long ago IF it was cost effective, it’s not. That’s why I submit Democrats banned drilling to make the price of oil more expensive. Not even geothermal plants are cost effective against coal, otherwise the electric companies would be building them left and right. So, Al Gore’s assertion is a blatant falsehood. Also implicit is the assumption that the total amount of electricity generated would remain at today’s levels, this is contrary to the historical consumption of electricity in the US. Thus he falsely reasons the US would only have to replace older plants as they reach the end of their useful lives.

Again, the only scenario where solar, wind and geothermal are cost effective is at a significantly higher price point than now. Are you prepared to double or triple your electric bill? I hope so because the Democrats are planning to make it cost effective by insisting on keeping the drilling ban in order to drive up the price of oil to whatever cost per barrel until it is. To say the least, this is a perverse view of the concept of “cost effectiveness”, deliberately raising the cost of an inexpensive commodity to be more expensive. Curiously, Al Gore does not advocate expanding nuclear power plants which would possibly meet most of this goal and not raise the cost of living. As to Al Gore’s motivation in suggesting the US move to alternate energy sources within the next ten years, one needs look no further than his ownership stake in companies poised to profit handsomely if it comes to pass. So far he has become a very wealthy person from his advocacy.
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.

Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.