The 2% Solution

Two Canadian men found
drunk, naked, covered in mud,
after dancing naked in the woods.

It appears to me that virtually no one was very satisfied with President Obama’s speech from the Oval Office. He basically just repeated what we already know: we’re going to investigate the cause of the spill, we’ve been talking about energy independence for a long time but doing nothing about it, he’s going to create a commission to study what went wrong (with the implication, I guess, that once we know that we can go ahead and drill some more), now is the time to move toward renewable energy and stop spending a billion a day on foreign oil, and etc. There was no detail, no plan put forward to do any of this, nothing but the same basic platitudes we have heard before. It was for me very disappointing. What I find the most troubling is when he says things like, we’ll make the Gulf even better than it was, or we’ll restore it to be just like it was, and so on. These are impossible claims, there is no way the Gulf can ever be restored completely or made better than it was. And the unfortunates that will have lost their livelihoods, their businesses, their wildlife, their environment, their very being, will never be able to fully recover their lost culture. The final result of this disaster is still unknown, but it looks like it will be far worse than anyone could have imagined. In spite of this horror, this unprecedented disaster, in spite of the Oil Companies admission they are not prepared to clean up the damage their do, there are still those who insist we should just keep on drilling. I understand that many people depend on the oil industry for their employment and they would suffer if drilling were to stop, but is the irreparable damage to our planet not more important? It is, after all, the only planet we have, and we have certainly not treasured it as we should have.

This leads me to consider the 2% solution. It is claimed that we use 20% of the oil but have only 2% of the reserves, reserves that will of course eventually be exhausted. So I ask, why bother? Why bother trying to recover a mere 2% of the world’s oil when the potential cost to the environment and ecosystem is so great? To me this seems foolish in the extreme. The fact that we have only 2% (and basically that is all we can truly depend on), should make us wary indeed of using it up as fast as possible. There will no doubt always be a need for some oil. Furthermore, I suspect that much of the oil we are producing is probably sold to others anyway. We should stop drilling now, period, and mount an all out effort to produce renewable energy from wind, tide, sun, water, and any other way we can devise (but no nuclear). Furthermore, I would strongly suggest that as we have so little in the way of oil, we cannot afford to let international corporations turn it into profit for themselves. We should nationalize it and guard it carefully.

Once again I would like to challenge the conventional wisdom. Many are assuming and claiming that this will be a big year for Republicans who might even gain a majority in the House of Representatives. I do not think this will happen, not because the Democrats are so great or necessarily deserve to win, but because the Republicans are so unbelievably worse. Republicans have nothing whatsoever to show for their years in the minority other than boasting of being the party of “no,” and opposing anything and everything Obama has tried to do. Is this really a record they can use to their advantage? I cannot see it. And this is not the only problem they have, now that they have extreme candidates like Rand Paul and that awful woman from Nevada representing them. I admit to being often wrong when it comes to politics, and perhaps I will be proven wrong once again, but if so it will because I never seem to understand the perversity of the American voting public. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday for the first time that said, “One Bad Ass Mistake America.” It was paired with another one that read simply, “Palin.” In my opinion there should have been a third one that said, “I am an absolute drooling Idiot.” It is hard to understand exactly what it is these people are objecting to, or what it is they want, as they seem to be a pretty disparate lot, not very well focused, and not very able for the most part to tell you what it is they either want or expect of their President. I could be wrong but I cannot see such people making much of an impact on the coming election, there is, after all, a limit to the amount of idiocy even in the United States. I am pretty sure that for many of these confused protestors Obama’s real problem is basically just “Being President While Black.”

LKBIQ:
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.
Laurence J. Peter

TILT:
A postage stamp featuring Ogden Nash, printed in 2002, was the first stamp where the word “sex” appeared (as meaning gender).