Back                                                      Energy

We hear a lot of rhetoric about the Alaskan oil reserves and how we should develop them "to become independent of foreign oil."  Let me point out that if we drilled all of the oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge it would only last for about two years. So even if we could get it out & pipe it or ship it back to the U.S. safely, (How many oil spills have there already been?) it would be gone in those two years. It wouldn't replace itself, it would just be gone. We might really need that oil sometime in the future. That doesn't matter to the oil companies, in two years they'll make a fortune.

The Artic oil, No the worlds oil, is not infinite. Someday we'll be forced to explore alternative energy sources, why not now? What are we waiting for? I shouldn't say that, a lot of progressive people are already working on alternative energy. Why even me. When I was still thinking about circumnavigating & after I bought my boat, one of the first things I did was to buy two solar panels for the forward decks, then I started to look into other energy sources, such as the feasibility of using wind & water power. maybe a small windmill on the top of my main mast or trolling a propeller connected to a generator behind the boat.

I guess my question is: Why isn't our government spending more? or at least, giving more tax breaks to those who are: Asking the public to conserve, getting out information on ways we can help, or developing new sources of energy. There are people in the midwest and western states that are now selling power back to the energy companies. They are creating more energy then they can use by using solar panels on the roof of their home, or placing wind mills in there grain fields. You can create energy by placing water wheel in a stream or under a waterfall & connecting it to a generator, but do you believe that this energy owned administration is going to do anything that would adversely affect it's largest contributors. I believe I heard Dick Cheney say, shortly after their election, that Americans should use even more energy, that it was good for the economy. What he really meant was it was good for his cronies.

What ever happened to Ethanol? I mean it's still there but Bush & his friends aren't trying to push it's use, even though it's renewable, burns cleaner & would help the American farmer. Oh! I forgot, they're all oilmen.

Some alternative sources of energy are. Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Clean coal technology, Hydroelectric, & speaking of hydroelectric, I heard somewhere that they're now experimenting with the tides. We need to do more as a people to find new sources of energy and we can't just deplete our oil reserves.

Others not so common sources are the use of vegetable oils, (How much vegetable oil is discarded from fast food restaurants) Manure gives off methane gas. Long ago & far away, people use to heat their homes or caves with wood, today most wood ends up in dumps, if we only used some of it & turned off our heater for a short time, it would help. How many fake fireplaces have you seen. They seem nice & are romantic but those gas burners behind fake logs are not helping our energy problems.

How come we can't learn which members of the big energy companies were at the meeting on our energy policy with Dick Cheney?

I also hear that the auto industry would be hurt by building cars that are energy efficient. In that regard let me make a point. They would still be making cars (Jobs), It would take engineers to design these cars (Jobs) If they had to redo their assembly lines they would need to buy new machine parts (Jobs) Let's face it the only people who would lose in this scenario is the oil companies.

We can also conserve energy but that wouldn't be good for the large energy companies that the administration favors. Chaney told us to use more energy.

Just a simple design change to make cars more aerodynamically efficient would  help.

more to come.