PRESIDENT OBAMA: DRIL BABY, DRILL
President
Obama with Brazilian President Lula Silva, maybe Obama should have
asked him how Brazil achieved energy independence as far back as 30
years ago.
Today
President Obama announced there will be drilling for oil and natural
gas in environmentally sensitive areas of our nation, offshore and in
Alaska.
I am a great admirer of the
President and trust him. But I don’t trust all of his advisors nor do I
think that our President is infallible. I am at this point questioning
the wisdom of this initiative to “drill, baby drill” that the
Republicans so adamantly have been prescribing. (Surely they will now
oppose it)
Perhaps this is just a case
similar to that of a drug addict. I lived across the street from one
who would hound his mother from the sidewalk: “ma, open the door, ma, I
need the money, c’mon give me some money” and he would not give up,
embarrassing the poor woman until she gave him the money to get his
fix. He would search the whole house for the $10.00 she put in the
collection plate every Sunday when she went to church. The guy was out
of control and it was his addiction.
I
am just wondering if this is not a similar case. We need the fix; we
are addicted to oil and can’t see our way to free ourselves from it.
The drilling might solve a very insignificant percentage of our needs
and ruin our environment. But the President assures us that we need
this now to create more jobs and to sustain us until we develop and
implement new technologies. I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
Frankly,
I was expecting a more comprehensive and far reaching energy
independence program. Something along the lines that it would be a
three stages endeavor: first, the government would install either solar
panels or wind energy equipment to run their buildings, second, a
massive government program to have every home in America install solar
panels or wind electricity producing equipment and third for the
businesses and industries.
Please don’t
tell me this is wishful thinking and it is impossible to do because we
don’t have the technology. Brazil did it 30 years ago and it was
successful, in a third world, relatively poor nation, it was done. Now
look at them, they are laughing at the oil producing nations and on top
of it all they have now found oil reserves reportedly bigger than those
of Saudi Arabia.
Are we just postponing our
weaning from our addiction to burning hydrocarbons? Are we not risking
the softening and eventual anemic attempt at developing other cleaner,
more reliable sources of energy? Is drilling just going to postpone the
inevitable? I let you come up with an answer because I don’t have one
but I get very suspicious when I see advertising on television trying
to convince Americans that the oil companies are doing the right thing
by investing and developing other sources of energy.
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