Ted... Re.<I am sorry that you have such biased view on public solutions. It seems you have come to believe that only the private sector can perform a useful service and closed off to any other possibility.<<<<
Unfortunately, the public sector, including government and public employee unions have become so self serving that any concern for efficiency is dwarfed by the rules and job protectionism. It has gotten so bad, now outright bribery is called a political donation. Over the weekend, there were reports that donars to Hillery's campaign were given overnight stays at white house and Camp David. And this is for just a senate seat; presidential campaigns are worse.Politicians routinely lie about anything and everything. We seem to have twice as many strikes in public employee unions; and worse, during strikes the teachers union members have upbraided the students because the parents didn't support their wage demands causing a war between the parents and teachers; two groups who have to work together.. And their demands aren't going to stop because they have us right by the billfold and they aren't going to let go.
<<<<<We can not replace oil and its many uses easily. It will requires numerous other resources to take up the slack. I believe it is better to use it efficiently so that future generations have "the real thing" instead of a 1000 substitutions.<<<
This is true if by easily you also mean cheaply. We will not run out of hydrocarbon sources,coal,oil,natural gas, shale oil, tar sand. for 500 yrs. The problem is not running out but rather the cost of getting the hydrocarbons to market. Oil prices have been way too cheap for competing sources so far, and that is why we probably should have a national gas tax, in order to give alternatives a chance. We will need them eventually, why not start now.
<<<You don't think we are capable of making good mass transit but we accomplished the above so easily....spoken liken a visionary scientist, right?!!<<
Ted, finding other sources of oil are far easier than fixing the public transportation system. Right now there is no system that has worked. Even a diehard eviromentalist like Scumbia fled the country rather than put up with the alternative, public transportation, or a bicycle. Your occasional tyrsts on a train sound good, but do they really do that much to help the enviroment. Amtrak will be nothing more than a trip to the past, rather than a drive to the future. If trains hauling freight can't compete with trucks, how would a train hauling people survive.
<I am too....especially those people who think humanity is all powerful and can heal the wounds inflicted on our ecology with the wave of a semi chip. <g><<<<<
Many of the answers to our problem are already known; cost and politics keep us from implementing the solutions. Nuclear fission probably will have to play a bigger part, but the enviromentalists would rather live with smog from coal plants. Breeder reactors could clean up a lot of the plutonium in the old warheads and diluted plutonium in barrels from Washington, and power plant swimming pools. Tar sands and coal could provide all of the oil we need. But its going to take time and money. We need to start now, but alas, its not going to happen. We probably have a better chance of AMD going to the moon tomorrow (TM-niceguy), than seeing a reasonable start on alternate fuels within 10 yrs. |
