A long time ago, over half a century ago, a writer named Harrison Brown wrote a book about energy called The Challenge of Man's Future: An Inquiry concerning the Condition of Man during the Years That Lie Ahead. Somewhat more recently, another writer, Robert Engler, wrote several books that analyzed the political economics of oil.
These writers influenced my thinking about energy from an early age. What they shared was an orientation that seemed rare when I was growing up. They both were focused not on the present but on the future.
Later, in my early 20's, I worked as a researcher-writer for Pacific Basin Reports, a small business publication that tracked global trade and investment issues, industry by industry.
One of my beats was the mining industry. Before I knew it, I knew more than almost anyone about the companies extracting tin, nickel, copper, etc., from wherever the richest reserves could be found -- worldwide. One of my long, meticulously documented articles was purchased in a quantity by the Bank of America that guaranteed every member of its Board of Directors received a copy.
I remembered these books and that job as I thought about what I want to say tonight about energy. Oil is the black gold of the past century. But what exactly is oil? Nothing more than compressed life from our past. In shorthand, we are eating our ancestors when we burn oil, which is one of the objections Aboringenes and all native peoples on the planet voice toward this fossil fuel extraction.
Peak Oil is the point when we have passed the point of the earth's remaining reserves' ability to continue to support our ever-increasing demand. Scientists differ, but most agree we have already or will soon past that point.
This, at a time when the majority of the world's people -- in China, India, and Africa -- are just getting within range of living their version of the "American Dream," flying down a highway in a cool car, a cute girl (or guy) at your side, music blaring, destination unknown.
The trouble is they will never achieve that dream, because we have been too greedy about ours. As a great nation, which I still believe we are, or at least could be, we need now to lead the way, immediately, in pioneering new technologies to unleash energy from renewable sources, as opposed to the finite type. After all, we and other plants and animals only have so many ancestors!
It's the time for solar, wind, ocean waves and solar-absorbing rocks to be tapped. It's time to cut back on the wasteful use of oil. An ancillary benefit of turning away from oil might be to help this nation pull back from its corrupt foreign adventurism in the Middle East and its lock-step support of Israel against the Arab nations.
So many wars fought, innocent lives lost, historical animosities unleashed!
In this context, we are asked to embrace another no-nothing demagogue, Sarah Palin, who's never been anywhere or read anything and who is such an irresponsible would-be leader that she launches a "drill, baby, drill" chant from her ignorant, adoring crowds.
That moment made me nauseous. Everything we need to do as a people at this moment in our history is rendered impossible if this kind of person ascends to a position of national power.
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