1) you and mindmeld tend to talk about conservation and producing more domestic energy as mutually exclusive alternatives (as observed above, advocating more domestic production actually angers you)
Not true. I think we should do both, but I am under no illusion like you that drilling more will help us get to energy independence. If you were to look at a pareto chart on the problem, you'd find that drilling more is a small solution compared to what conservation and alternative energy can do to impact prices and make our country more secure. We can do it all, but I will always prefer the high impact solutions.
2) you assume conservation has to be commanded by some collective decision imposed by the government. In reality, the only way meaningful conservation is gonna happen is people voluntarily responding to prices.
See my previous post on this country needing to act as a collective instead of just being random do-gooders. Historically, countries that act as a collective tend to survive longer as independent organized bodies. Those that act as individuals with no regard for the collective, soon find themselves with no collective. It's the same for companies. If the leaders are good, then they have strategies, visions, and they execute on those to the benefit of the company. If they don't have good leaders that pull together collecgtive strategies, then those businesses eventually fail. Governments are no different. We elect leaders to lead on the biggest issues of the day, not to sit them out and hope that American individualism will win the day. That is a recipe for disaster, as we have seen from the last 8 years in this country. |
