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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IndexTrader who wrote (60)	4/25/2001 1:15:41 PM
From: Jerry in Omaha	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 16955

Susan, Recently OPEC made a decision to cut oil production to maintain oil prices above about $26 per barrel. When it only costs between $1.50 and $3.20 per barrel to produce, including capital costs, it's easy to see that the potential to go to the mat in an economic death match with alternative energy is huge. Do we dreamers on this thread have any real basis to believe that the oil producing countries will just sit on their reserves while we substitute renewable energy sources for their national bread and butter? Nope. When the implementation of alternative energy technologies is driven by economic considerations only, then the chances we'll be kicking the oil habit anytime soon diminish to insignificance. When national and global political considerations govern the supply, and the demand equation remains inelastic because of a fully developed infrastructure relying almost exclusively on a single oily commodity, economic law is turned upside down and totally subverted by such political realities that transcend economic ones. If the playing field is politically engineered out of level how can any alternative compete? Real world economics, then, becomes a political artifact totally unconnected to any general theory of economics. Economics itself becomes fungible, a variable function of politics. Unpleasant consequences are externalized into an economic no-mans-land beyond the political fences. You wrote: <<It takes intelligent & creative people to perfect these alternative energy sources. And it will take even more intelligent & creative people to get them installed. I hope we do not need a major crises for it to happen, but, likely, that is what will be required.>> When the status quo is a rigged game, where do creative intelligent people ply their trade? Certainly not in opposition; rather in support. On the Ginger thread I asked you why it is that so many people get so excited over the prospect of Kamen's Ginger being some kind of killer app technology. Perhaps it's our tacit understanding that only something really, really, alternatively huge is capable of defeating the fix-is-in status quo. Therein lies our group longing. Sadly lacking a killer tech app we search, morbidly, for some global crises to fortify our alternative political power base. How perverse is that? We may know that two trains headed toward each other on the same track is not a good thing. We certainly know we are virtually powerless to do anything about it. And we forget that the crises occurs only after the trains have wrecked. The question is: Do we really want the huge global crises that leads to the disastrous wreck that puts us off oil for good? Sorry to be so gloomy, but, short of some kind of a religious revival subsuming politics as we know it, alternative energy technologies, no matter how cheap or efficient, are playing poker against a stacked deck and huge reserves of ensleeved aces. Jerry (bummed) in Omaha PS -- Do read that article about the Aussie Quickstep technology. It just might make it possible to engineer, and economically feasible to fabricate, another wild and crazy idea of my old friend and Strangeloveian knock-off, Dr. Russell Anania. He wants to make an aircraft lighter than air by sucking all the air out of a zeppelin to get it up! :-)