Drill, Baby, Drill!

     Dear Friends, Foes, Freaks and Fuzzies,

     It looks as though some progress is being made on the domestic oil front, with the 4/8/11 ‘rig and drill report’ noting that Hercules Offshore Drilling, an american company in the gulf, has been granted two drill permits.  Hercules will be drilling for oil monster Chevron, but at least we are seeing a gulf-based company get some long-awaited business.

     CFYSA has set up a charitable trust, which includes american oil company stocks in it’s portfolio.  It also has solar power, wind power and water desalinization companies, as well as a uranium mining company.  We believe in covering all corners.

     Having actively attended the very first Earth Day in 1970, we are very much aware of the implications of using oil.  We know it is not a good thing and that alternative sources must be found.  Five years ago, scientists said we had five years to get the carbon emissions issues in order before we hit the tipping point.  Well, looky-look, because we are now at the tipping point and have still done nothing.  Some people believe that their elected officials have an eye on this and will not allow constituents to die of pure pollution, like those people in NYC back in the 60s.  Good luck on that!

     We all know that solar, wind and nuclear energies are the best ways to get us off of the petrol diet.  What many people do not seem to grasp is that major change often reaches the transition step by step.  We cannot simply stop using oil and switch to solar and wind, or even nuclear energy.  Grids need to be set up, infrastructure put in place and lobbyists fom the alternative energy companies need to find elected officials they can pay off to vote for their products.

     We see how we are bound by foreign oil…or do we?  Is it the oil or our appetites?  In the first decade of this century, everybody from Tony Soprano to your grandma drove an SUV.  We worked in offices at the time and three quarters of the people drove trucks or SUVs and had no reason to do so, aside from the fact that it was cheap and easy to get a car loan.  Who is willing to cut their own consumption?

     Maybe a ban on gas-powered recreational vehicles, like ATVs, jetskis, outboard and inboard motorboats and mini-bikes would chip away at the total of consumed fuel.  It would be nice to include motorcycles but some people do use them to get to work and school, so that is a bit harder to do.  You have to wonder about the brain of a person who gets thier biggest thrill from burning gasoline noisily.  It is one thing if you are under 16 because children do need to play but why not find a form of recreation that does not consume fossil fuel or make a hell of a racket?  In the 1970s, when we grew up, bikes were cool and so were the people who rode them, generally.  Now, any ignorant ass with an extra few thousand dollars and a fat wife has one parked in the yard.  It is like what George Carlin said about tattoos and ear rings…to paraphrase him, it was something like, “In the old days we had these things to piss off the squares; now, it is the squares who have them.”  This is especially true in the case of tattoos and Harleys.

     But we digress…the main point we would like to make is that, yes, oil is bad, mmkay?, but we need to use it wisely until we can transition to other energy sources.  The fact that the first ‘hybrid’ car was built in 1900 and the concept subsequently hidden for a hundred years shows how good we are at transition.  We are not.

     Who wants to try?