"Jim Chinnis" > wrote in message
...
> "Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in part:
>
> >At any rate, we already know what we need to do to the economy to
> >reduce dependence on foreign oil. We need to migrate the economy
> >to renewable power sources. And there are not many of them. Wind
> >power is really one of the few available that has enough energy to
> >run the economy. Nuclear is another if you can accept the waste problem
> >(most people can't) The rest of them, such as damming rivers, direct
> >photovoltiac conversion, geothermal, biofuel and so forth, either have
> >unwanted
> >side effects (fish kills) or are too terribly inefficient, or there
aren't
> >enough
> >of them, to provide sufficient energy.
>
> But none of those approaches has a chance while oil is cheap. So,
> yeah, we know what we need to do.

But, it isn't cheap, actually. It is just the costs are spread elsewhere.

Let's face it, the entire reason Bush invaded Iraq was oil. If the cost
of that war was entirely paid for by a federal tax on each barrel of
oil, you would see sudden readjustment in people thinking of oil being
"cheap" And while we are at it, might as well pay for all the
bribery I-mean-foreign-aid that we give Israel, Saudia Arabia, and
all the rest of the mid East countries to keep a lid on things over there.

One of these days, and I hope I'm alive to see it, the Mid East will run
out of oil. When that happens the rest of the developed worlds governments,
including China, are going to turn their back on that area of the globe.
We will just build a giant fence around it, and let the occupants go
free to murder each other over 'their homelands' Maybe once they
have had a few generations of total warfare against each other and
flattened most of their population centers, they might get sick of it -
or if they cannot learn, then they will just end up killing each other off
until nobody is left. Either way, problem solved.

Until then the rest of the world is stuck dumping money into that
snake pit.

I guess we ought at least to thank our lucky stars that so many of
the people over there are mentally ****ed in the head with all this
religion crapola - if the societies in the Mid East ever came to their
senses and banded together, the rest of us in the world would
be their slaves.

Ted