Energy Crisis
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
Most newspaper readers are familiar with the flawed feline Garfield, and are aware of his slothfulness, insolence and gluttony, but not until the e-mail that is running through cyberspace had I ever considered stupidity as one of his flaws.
This message, which arrives in shout print, is titled "Garfield On the Oil Crisis." I am shouting back that this is not an oil crisis, stupid, it is an energy crisis. So long as we keep our eyeballs peeled on the wrong target, we miss the bedrock of the issue. Whoever dreamed up this e-mail must be visionary, i.e. his vision extends to the end of his nose, similar to our very own D.C. representative, Mark Souder.
The message announced we have oil in Alaska, California, coastal Florida, etc. Drilling in all the places listed is like spitting in the ocean. It ain't gonna cut the mustard even if we could extract the oil yesterday. And those pols who are suggesting it, even advocating it, are pandering to public panic and ignorance.
In some parts of the country French Canadians are considered stupid. A couple of years ago I went back to the Gaspe Peninsula, the part of Quebec that sticks out into the Atlantic, and they have glistening wind turbines mounted on top of their small mountains. The Midwest gets some pretty strong winds, so why aren't we doing likewise? In Denmark I saw the sleek wind turbines marching like sentinels into the horizon along the North Sea while those clever Danes sell their domestic oil to Europe. Some say the turbines constitute visual pollution, but to my mind they look like crisp, sleep modern sculpture. Visual pollution? Take a look at cell phone towers.
In France, they have been successfully using nuclear energy since the mid-60s, powering their own country and selling power to parts of London, Belgium, Germany and Spain. Are they brighter than we are? Even T. Boone Pickens, a high priest in the oil industry, is advocating a multi-faceted approach (although for short term he is for drilling in Alaska - Alas!).
Why should it take the Oracle of Delphi to point the way to a long-term rational solution?
Tam Vogel
Winona Lake, via e-mail[[In-content Ad]]
Most newspaper readers are familiar with the flawed feline Garfield, and are aware of his slothfulness, insolence and gluttony, but not until the e-mail that is running through cyberspace had I ever considered stupidity as one of his flaws.
This message, which arrives in shout print, is titled "Garfield On the Oil Crisis." I am shouting back that this is not an oil crisis, stupid, it is an energy crisis. So long as we keep our eyeballs peeled on the wrong target, we miss the bedrock of the issue. Whoever dreamed up this e-mail must be visionary, i.e. his vision extends to the end of his nose, similar to our very own D.C. representative, Mark Souder.
The message announced we have oil in Alaska, California, coastal Florida, etc. Drilling in all the places listed is like spitting in the ocean. It ain't gonna cut the mustard even if we could extract the oil yesterday. And those pols who are suggesting it, even advocating it, are pandering to public panic and ignorance.
In some parts of the country French Canadians are considered stupid. A couple of years ago I went back to the Gaspe Peninsula, the part of Quebec that sticks out into the Atlantic, and they have glistening wind turbines mounted on top of their small mountains. The Midwest gets some pretty strong winds, so why aren't we doing likewise? In Denmark I saw the sleek wind turbines marching like sentinels into the horizon along the North Sea while those clever Danes sell their domestic oil to Europe. Some say the turbines constitute visual pollution, but to my mind they look like crisp, sleep modern sculpture. Visual pollution? Take a look at cell phone towers.
In France, they have been successfully using nuclear energy since the mid-60s, powering their own country and selling power to parts of London, Belgium, Germany and Spain. Are they brighter than we are? Even T. Boone Pickens, a high priest in the oil industry, is advocating a multi-faceted approach (although for short term he is for drilling in Alaska - Alas!).
Why should it take the Oracle of Delphi to point the way to a long-term rational solution?
Tam Vogel
Winona Lake, via e-mail[[In-content Ad]]
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