Thinking About Getting Away To NZ Again

It can really be a pain in the ass to pay attention these days. If ignorance is bliss, give me a lobotomy or make me watch hours of MTV programming.

While most of the social and political nausea happens in the U.S., this week’s loony award goes to the British Prime Minister. While Gordon Brown was attending the G-8 Summit, he attempted to shame the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food and called on British families to cut back on their wasteful use of food. A few hours later, he and his G-8 brethren were served 24 different dishes during his first day at the summit. No wonder his approval rating in England is at 17 percent. Hopefully the Brits can still eat their cake.

On this side of the pond, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was making me sick by urging Americans to stop using coal and oil. Reid made the following rant in front of television cameras: “Coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, it’s global warming, it’s ruining our country and ruining our world” and “we’ve got to stop using fossil fuels.” All I can say to the dem’s fearless leader: you first Harry. Turn off your office lights, get out of your chauffeured Towne Car and buy a bicycle and ride to work, turn off your computers, toss out your refrigerator, your microwave, your oven, your television, your Blackberry, your washer and dryer and, especially, shut off your microphone. See how well you live without electricity. Lead by example and maybe we’ll follow. Maybe.

And if we're into this whole leading by example thing, why don't we have wealthy congressional leaders who believe wealthy Americans don't pay enough in taxes start paying more of their own money in taxes? C'mon Senator Kennedy, nothing in the tax code says you can't pay more than you owe. Toss in a few million more for America's downtrodden.

Speaking of global warming, did anyone see China and India flipping the bird to the rest of us on reducing carbon emissions? Back at the G-8 Summit, there was a lot of hand-wringing on global warming between rounds of food tasting (Organic, no doubt). While the most developed countries – Germany, UK, France, the US, among others – were busy surrendering their economies at the altar of climate change, India and China were throwing cold water on limiting greenhouse gases by rejecting the G-8’s curbs on carbon emissions. That’s bad news for the acolytes of global warming, but here’s a good point: if every person living in China and India threw some cold water on anything, wouldn’t that start another Ice Age?

How can the developed world that has spent so much time, money and energy cleaning up its polluted rivers and air (remember LA in the Sixties?) unilaterally give up human progress and allow 25 percent of the earth’s population to pollute full speed ahead? Is it just me or do global warming alarmists just believe climate change happens over the U.S. and other developed countries, sparing the developing world? Do only carbon emissions originating in the developed world shrink the polar caps, or is it possible that something happening in China and India has an impact? Of course, the bigger joke is the polar caps have as much ice today as they did 100 years ago. Doubters can look that up if they want.

Of course the price of oil is grabbing all the headlines these days. What burns my cookies to a crisp is the reason oil prices have gone up didn’t just happen yesterday. If you believe in the mystery of supply and demand, you would note the growing economies of India, China and Southeast Asia and surmise it would have an impact on oil usage. If you were paying attention and really focused, you might notice that oil producing countries are in volatile regions of the world such as the Middle East where even the camels can’t get along. You may even note that our military adventurism might stir up a bit of dust and create uncertainty in the oil markets.

So if all of these things were occurring over the past few decades, where were our elected officials on this? We actually elect these people to pay attention to these kinds of details so we can work the first six months of the year to pay for the government they are supposed to be running. Why didn’t someone in Congress see this coming and have committees created, reports written and solutions promoted? It seems all they did was make sure they had a scapegoat at the ready.

We’re being told now that there is no point in drilling anywhere because new wells won’t produce oil for 7-10 years. Are they trying to tell us we won’t need oil in 7-10 years? What would have happened if Members read the tea leaves better and drilled 7-10 years ago?

The best idea on oil I’ve head lately is from Newt Gringrich, who I am beginning to believe should be running the country right now. Check out his American Solutions website and read what an intelligent leader comes up with when he doesn’t have to please various voting blocs.

One of Newt’s ideas is to sell half of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve at current market prices. That would dump 350 million barrels of oil on the market at $140 per barrel.

If my calculator can correctly handle numbers this large, a sale of 350 million barrels would bring in the tidy sum of $49 billion. Newt believes this amount of oil suddenly dumped on the market would drop oil prices by $50 per barrel and anger a few sheiks and despots (and to keep the dems happy, cause a few speculators to lose their shirts).

Newt’s idea doesn’t end with a simple sale. Once oil drops down to $90 per barrel, he says buy it all back, rake in the savings and re-fill the petroleum reserve. That would turn a profit of $17.5 billion which could be used to spend on research for alternative energy programs. If the price of oil began to inch up later on, we’d only have to toss out the notion of dumping our reserve on the market again to keep OPEC and others honest. Leave it up to capitalism to find a cure for …. well … capitalism.

But if all this is getting you down, watch this funny parody on the panic over oil.