Interlude, 13 April 2011: Musings On The Meaning Of Four-Dollar Gas

OldSouth hasn't had time or energy to gather many thoughts of late--working pedal-to-the-metal, with a seemingly endless pile of tasks to accomplish in the coming six to eight weeks. It's one of 'those times', everyone goes through them.

Watching gasoline approach $4.00 the gallon in the US, and aware that we float on a sea of oil and natural gas our own government won't allow to be extracted and refined is utterly maddening. Words just fail, except to say that we are now entering about our fortieth year of willful blindness. We have waged two out-and-out wars with Iraq, started another in Libya, have had the fleet all over the Strait of Hormuz, the Med, the Indian Ocean, and everyone armed to the teeth there since about 1970 at least. Then there's Israel, who have located their own domestic sources of petroleum. Bet it won't be much of a debate about extracting and refining their own oil!

How many people have we gotten killed because we won't follow the obvious wise course?

How much treasure has been expended? How many dictators propped up?

How many jobs lost and careers curtailed because of the booms and busts that fuel price rises and falls create?

It's incalculable, but it's real. We've become so numb to it, we forget that it's an insane way to live.

We keep making stupid cultural decisions, whose consequences show up later when industries melt down.

This one is a no-brainer. Let's drill, dig, build refineries, reactors (ooh, he said the 'R' word) not constructed on major seismic faults, dams with hydro generators, coal-fired generators, gas pipelines, and anything else we can think of that will keep the lights on and the economy on the road. Let's do it now.

Let's get this done.