Burn On Big Government
In 1969, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire, not for the first time. Randy Newman wrote a song about it, “Burn On,” which some of you might remember from the beginning of the film “Major League.” Randy wrote:
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn
No, the Lord can’t make a river burn, but man can. This came to mind as I was reading Elizabeth Kolbert in this week’s New Yorker:
While the point of “peak oil” may or may not have been reached, what Michael Klare, a professor at Hampshire College, has dubbed the Age of Tough Oil has clearly begun. This year, the United States’ largest single source of imported oil is expected to be the Canadian tar sands. Oil from the tar sands comes in what is essentially a solid form: it has to be either strip-mined, a process that leaves behind a devastated landscape, or melted out of the earth using vast quantities of natural gas.
[snip]
Will the Gulf spill, like the Santa Barbara spill, prove to be the kind of disaster that jolts the nation into action? So far, the signs are not encouraging. Members of the Drill, Baby, Drill Party have blocked efforts to raise the liability limits for oil spills, and have yet to muster a single sponsor for climate legislation. At the same time, they have sought to portray the spill as President Obama’s Katrina.
The President does, in fact, share in the blame. Obama inherited an Interior Department that he knew to be plagued by corruption, but he allowed the department’s particularly disreputable Minerals Management Service to party on.
The spill won’t change a damn thing because it can’t. Oil is part of nearly everything we do, and there is no quitting it without massive disruption. It would be nice to think that science will shortly gift us all with pollution-free, hydrogen fuel cell hover-cars, that day is not anywhere near, nor even a dream of semi-plausible science fiction. There is a day coming, I’m not sure when, maybe not in my lifetime but soon, when there will be a major rearrangement of American life because our petrol-based manner of living just won’t be sustainable. All of our sprawling suburbs (I live in one) will have to contract into dense hamlets or die… Which probably wouldn’t be so bad–who says that waiting through traffic just to buy a bottle of milk has to be a part of life? Doesn’t the milkman make sense, one car going to 100 houses instead of 100 cars going to one supermarket?
The “Drill Baby” crowd is for postponing the inevitable by pursuing ever-more difficult, dangerous, and damaging sources of oil. In their favor, there ain’t a whole lot of alternatives right now. The solution, if there is one, will have to come through government for the simple reason that private investment is not all that interested in blue-sky research, nor even in energy research that has a pretty likely near-horizon payoff for the simple reason that the turnaround on the money is too slow: there is no short-term profit in energy research. If you had a patent for one of those hover-cars I mentioned above, you would only have won a tiny, infinitesimal part of the battle. Before you could become the next Thomas Edison, you would need billions of dollars of investment in hover-car infrastructure–fueling and repair stations, hydrogen creation, mass fuel cell production… It’s not a one- or even five-year process, but the work of 10 or 20 years at minimum. What investor is going to rent out his money for that long? Few or none, and not in the quantities needed.
That’s why it has to be the government. The “Manhattan Project for X” construction is overused, but it is what is needed to avoid more accidents like the one in the Gulf, accidents that will do 100 years of damage for a few years of oil… Even them, I’m pessimistic. It takes energy to make energy, be it coal or oil or nuclear or Kryptonite-powered repulsor pumps, and I’m just not sure that there really is a comprehensive solution to the problems of consumption, pollution, scarcity–but someone has to try.
May 26th, 2010 at 8:20 am
Yikes.
First, you miss the obvious. Nuclear power is the easiest solution to many of our power issues. Reactors take up little room, its waste is limited and can be kept in very small areas (Yucca Mountain), and we already have the technology. If we make some small strides in battery technology and put in some investment into powerline infrastructure, it is very doable. It also has less of a negative environmental impact than even the fairy tale solar and wind power industries.
France, the nirvana of the progressive movement, already gets approximately 70% of its power from nuclear reactors. Of course it was never about “green energy” for the far left, so they will continue to stonewall here. As we all know (but ony some of us will admit), green is the new red…
Second, although slightly more expensive there are safer ways to get energy. Oils sands in Canada, shale oil, and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas are examples.
It is the government that makes investment into energy research unattractive. See above. They are all examples of private companies investing in energy research only to have their hands lopped off by regulations demanded by the eco-Nazis. Suddenly, cleaner is not good enough and the far left expects absolutely no negative ecological impact for it to be acceptable.
Also, was it the government that created the current infrastructure of automobile production, repair stations, and refueling stations? If not, I fail to see why the private sector could not do it again.
And, BTW, I was able to get an investor to front me the money to buy a house over a period of 30 years with only a fraction of the “upside”. I am fairly certain that I am not the only one.
Finally, although it is OT, I eagerly await a post regarding the inherent racism of the Obama Administration. 1200 National Guard and more money for border security? We KNOW what this REALLY is, correct? Wink, wink. I mean, they will not be checking European looking individuals, correct?
As you said, Steven, “A haphazard policy of harassment, such as is being implemented in Arizona, isn’t going to accomplish much. Instead, it embraces a hysteria about immigrants that seems to resurface in difficult economic times for different groups over our history. We need to ask real questions about our need for guest laborers, we need to guarantee those documented guest workers a decent wage so that they do not end up as more weight on the social safety net, and we need to thoroughly punish employers who then turn to undocumented aliens who will work more cheaply than their documented brethren, a practice that injures Americans and aliens alike.
This is, of course utopian, it was the moment I mentioned a decent wage, but the bigger point is that we’re at a rather masturbatory moment in history. When the economy sours, immigrants get kicked in the teeth. Eventually, the economy heats up again, we stop worrying about Mexicans in the begonias, and we get on to abusing some other group. Then things get cold again… It’s a pointless cycle that doesn’t really address causes or effects, just frightens and abuses a generation of poor people just trying to make a buck.”
May 26th, 2010 at 8:58 am
The solution, if there is one, will have to come through government for the simple reason that private investment is not all that interested in blue-sky research
What a ridiculous comment! First of all, plenty of private individuals and organizations are interested in all kinds of research. They would be a lot more interested if the government didn’t take away half of their profits in the form of state and federal income taxes and other taxes.
Second, our elected representatives in government aren’t particularly interested in any kind of research; they’re interested in getting re-elected and giving money to their friends.
To the degree that government does get involved in commerce, it tends to be reactionary. E.g., the government spent many billions in auto company bailouts. Did that money go to companies focused on revolutionary new technologies? No, it went to big, stodgy old, failing companies. They had the political pull to get rewarded. And, the money went to labor unions, who are hardly cutting edge research scientists.
May 26th, 2010 at 9:44 am
What is inevitable? We’ve been hearing the hysterics tell us for more then 30 years that we’re running out of oil. In 1978 famed geologist Jimmy Carter said we had 10 years of left! I must have been on vacation when we ran out.
Then Boone Pickens, in an attempt to get countless tens of millions from taxpayers for his wind boondoggle, said we would reach “peak oil” in 1992!
Yet despite all the dire predictions, I’ve not heard anything about oil shortages in quite a few years. In fact, all we hear about is major new finds, and everyone in the world is drilling for it, except us of course!
If we removed every motor vehicle from our roads, we would still require 5-7 million barrels a day simply to keep out economy going. I think you “renewable” energy dreamers should take a gander at the endless list of proucts used in your daily lives derived from oil. It might surprise you!
Since we were going to run out of oil in 1988, and we’re (the world) still swimming (literally in some areas!) in it, it must be being renewed! Of course, we could join Spain’s incredibly “successful” venture in a renewable energy, “green” jobs Utopia.
That brilliant move (by yet another Socialist “leader”) has led Spain to a 20% unemployment, and a U. of Madrid study said that for every “green” job created, 2.2 real job was lost. That’s some terrific model to copy!
The hysteria over the Gulf tragedy is ridiculous. It is the “needle in a haystack.” More than 60% of the oil in our waters comes from “natural” seapage, 4% from transport, and ONE percent from drilling! Yes this is a disaster, but it will be cleaned up. The percentage of oil in the waters is minsicule in comparison to the total amount of water in the same area.
Man will clean up some, and nature will do the rest, just as it does after massive volcanic eruptions destroy everything for miles around it. Get photos of Mt. St Helens after the eruption, and then some time afterward. Ditto for the Bikin Atoll where we tested atomic bombs.
This planet is not fragile. It has survived massive natural disasters for 4.5 BILLION years, and it will easily survive this current disaster, and we will continue to need the same 15 million barrels of oil each day!
How many people have died in airplane crashes since the last drilling accident. Maybe we should have a “moritorium” on flying until we can insure there will NEVER be another accidnt!