Who said that? John F. Kennedy.
President Barrack Obama at the very least, now has put a time-table on a Clean Energy Bill becoming the reality of a bright shiny new future. Or was he saying the bill would be passed by 2035, or would it just make it through the house at that point?
History recap: "Clean energy! Solar power!"
I feel confident that somewhere in the speeches of George Washington can be found a snippet of a promise or two about clean energy.
This has become embedded within the tradition of the State of the Union Address; the nod to self sustaining, clean and reliable energy for the future that does not depend on a resource that causes so many wars and heartache as well as the release of so much greenhouse gas.
Trouble is, energy is life. You can't grow or transport food without it. You can't stay alive in winter, and in some places during summer, sans that stuff which makes it.
Trouble is, energy is life. You can't grow or transport food without it. You can't stay alive in winter, and in some places during summer, sans that stuff which makes it.
Oil.
Gasoline, and oil. Oil is found at certain depths pressures in the rock strata. It only happens after millions of years of time which can't be recreated in a lab. Thus, there's only so much of it.
You can't ask Jesus to change this fact. You can't call it a Liberal or a commie or a socialist or hint that this fact isn't Christian, or that it is unpatriotic.
And most assuredly, if you wish to understand this resource - very inconvenient for some to admit - you have to accept that the world is a good bit older than 4,000 years.
The "only so much of it" nature of this stuff is what's killing us. Because before the greenhouse gas does the rest we will run out of it. And since we have not planned for this, there will be chaos.
It'ls like a drug that way.
The hydrocarbon molecule is just so damned good at making energy. Long flowing chains of hydrogen and carbon and a few oxygens thrown in for good measure. Carbon can bond at four places. It can triple bond with itself, double bond with oxygen, if memory serves. Carbon bonds, when they break, release a lot of energy. Thereforethe combustion of long flowing chains of hydrocarbons as is found in gasoline is a very efficient explosion, doing more work than coal, or alcohol or synthetic or bio-fuel.
Well, scratch that: gasoline, light sweet crude, (oooh baby) ARE biofuels, in that they came from living matter. Only, they have been given that sweet essence of time and deep pressure and simmering heat so that those long chains can form.
Imagine nature creating a Barry White song, and all the little chains hooking up and the song going on and on. Beautiful really.
Between now and 2035, when Obama has set forth his mandated time for clean energy, absolutely NO new light sweet crude will have been created by nature. In fact, if you took that time and raised it to the power of 8?.....no new light sweet crude will have been created. Not enough time.
But, the energy needs of the world will have exploded exponentially.
So when Rep. Paul Ryan, and Rep. Michelle Bachman talk about "job killing" proposals for clean energy, really listen to what they are saying.
Sure, they'll talk about the flag, they'll say "God Bless America" they might even quote scripture. But that isn't a plan.
Peak oil is what they call it; concerned scientists who think that owing to finite nature of the juice from the ground, there comes a point where we have drank up half of it already. That we can pour more and more money into digging deeper and deeper and in different places but still, we won't be able to get anymore out, that the end of the curve approaches. Can't get blood from a stone.
Some said in 1986 Peal Oil was here. Some said it happened in the late 1990s. Some say it's here now.
No matter. The science is pretty sound and in the geologic time frame, 1986 the late 1990s and 2011, are all essentially the same time.
So, whats the move?
Well yeah, we've got to get on that, like the president says. Oh hell yeah. Let's do that. Let's DO exactly THAT, as in NOW!
Errr, back up. Who are we talking about?
More than half the people in that room, including President Barrack Obama, have taken money from the oil lobby, which is why, uh-gin, the mention of clean energy gained a smattering of feigned delayed applause which lasted precisely .7 seconds. Don't bother running the tape, I checked. Just over half a second.
Oil lobby folks want you to go right on believing, just like that Journey song, that somehow everything is gonna be alright. They want education budgets cut nationwide, so that smart young chillin' never get edumaketed enough to see what's going on.
They want you to go right on believing the world is 4000 years old and that God invented the V-8 so that man could slurp up just as much damned gas as he wanted to.
Why?
Because THEY WANT the end of the curve to come. Because as it draws closer, they will become THE most powerful consortium, or cartel in the history of the world. They are very nearly there as it is.
Look at the horror that was visited on us last summer.
Not one criminal charge has been filed.
Obama gives a marvelous speech. Really and truly he does.
The challenge is every bit as difficult as going to the moon inside a decade. As with Apollo 13 "failure is not an option."
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