Monday, July 14, 2008
I had not realized how much time had passed since the previous post. The critical issues, however, do not change: self-deluding enviro-ninnies do not comprehend the dangers presented by sky-rocketing oil prices.
This was brought home by video (formerly "film at eleven") on the news of another Ruskie military parade. Until recently, the former RFSSR was so poor it could could not even meet the minimum daily adult vodka requirements of its citizens for their abbreviated (40+) life expectancies. Now it is rolling in oil money, able to spend billions on a revitalized military establishment that has resumed cold war predations on the fringes of American air space. Unstable autocracies in other former SSRs (e.g., Kazakhistan, Azerbijan) are also awash in petro-dollars and petro-Euros and are attractive targets for hegemonic Russian impulses. Iran has excess millions to finance its Hezbollah and Hamas surrogates and buy nuclear technology from renegade Pakistanis. Hugo Chavez can increase his subsidization of property-appropriating Marxist-revolutionary wannabes in Central and South American, Sudan can exterminate more refugees in Darfur, Saudi Arabia can export countless Wahabist imams and Quranic hate tracts, and China -- once it finishes drilling off of the American coast line -- can turn Cuba into a Caribbean subsidiary.
The United States, thanks to energy conservation, still uses approximately the same amount of oil as in 1997, albeit a much larger portion comes from foreign sources. The inexorable growth of the U.S. population will assure that oil consumption will not decline, even if the Sod Roof crowd coerces the American public into 60 mpg mini-cars and walking to work on odd-numbered days. This is the bet that speculators in the oil futures markets are making every day: that supplies will not increase, and demand will not decrease -- and will probably go up. To build all of the infrastructure for which the D's want to appropriate funds, how many billion barrels of asphalt do you think will be required? And where does that asphalt come from? Why, the same hole in the ground that gives you jet fuel!
In the meantime, Americans will continue to subsidize Russian militarists, Middle Eastern terrorists and Latin American Marxists -- unless the price of oil returns to some reasonable level. How can that happen? According to some estimates, the United States is sitting on recoverable oil reserves equal to or exceeding the reserves of the rest of the world. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that that statement is hyperbole, and the earliest date a drop of oil from the currently off-limits reserves is delivery to a refinery is five years from today, the long term solution necessary to preserve American security is to "Drill Here; Drill Now; Pay Less" (www.americansolutions.com) and make certain that speculators and autocractic rulers can no longer distort the market price of oil. Unless, of course, you don't care a fig about American security, or can skateboard to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, Americans will continue to subsidize Russian militarists, Middle Eastern terrorists and Latin American Marxists -- unless the price of oil returns to some reasonable level. How can that happen? According to some estimates, the United States is sitting on recoverable oil reserves equal to or exceeding the reserves of the rest of the world. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that that statement is hyperbole, and the earliest date a drop of oil from the currently off-limits reserves is delivery to a refinery is five years from today, the long term solution necessary to preserve American security is to "Drill Here; Drill Now; Pay Less" (www.americansolutions.com) and make certain that speculators and autocractic rulers can no longer distort the market price of oil. Unless, of course, you don't care a fig about American security, or can skateboard to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving.
# posted by JGB @ 7:20 AM 
