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Strategies & Market Trends : Ask Vendit Off-Topic Questions -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Vendit™ who wrote (7833)	4/16/2005 8:35:18 PM
From: Walkingshadow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 8752

"Clean diesel fuels" sound good in the telling, but are unbelievably inefficient from an thermodynamic perspective, despite their price. They will provide no viable long-term solution. Arguably, they will ultimately compound the problem, not resolve it. Despite the lip-service to alternative energy sources, I see little evidence for any real commitment to anything other than exploiting our natural resources (e.g., the Arctic fields) at a profit. Now we have the perfect justification/rationalization: our national security. I've heard all this before ad nauseum in the 70's after the big oil crisis. There was a lot more lip service to alternative energy sources then. Little actually happened, because there was no strong economic incentive, only a political one. The political incentive then is precisely the same as the political incentive now: "we must reduce our dependence on Arab oil" so they can't blackmail us anymore. Great. Problem is, business cares about profits, not politics. The other problem is there is far too much profit potential in developing, drilling, refining, and selling our own reserves, vs. little or none to develop other energy dependencies. So the choice of which path to take was a no-brainer then, and it is a no-brainer now. Because there is such profit potential, and because there is now a catalyst (Bush and his incessantly trumpeted national security concerns, real, imagined, or manufactured), that's what will happen: we will exploit our oil reserves. And while it is happening, little will be done to address the fundamental problem because there is no profit incentive to do so. All we will have will be what we had in the 70s: endless rhetoric and posturing, no real commitment, no real capital investment, no significant development of a fundamentally different petroleum-independent infrastructure, no cash on the barrelhead. Unless and until that changes, I see no resolution. Add to that the fact that Bush (and his family and associates) have an obvious and clear conflict of interest in the matter, and I think it is a foregone conclusion that so long as he can stir up sufficient fear of foreigners and concerns about national security----real, imagined, or conveniently manufactured----he can and will persuade the Republican rubber stamp to exploit our irreplaceable oil reserves, and many will profit. After all, we have the best Congress money can buy. But our children will be left out in the cold to deal with the problem which will all too soon become emergent. We will all be dead. But they will rightfully curse our irresponsibility in choosing short-term profits over long-term solutions, in choosing greed over concern for the long-term economic welfare of our children and grandchildren and the nation that I can only pray will remain half as strong and great as it is today. I have serious doubts about that, thanks to the short-sighted decisions we are making today. The greatness of this nation was predicated on an infrastructure of innovation, hard work, helping one another, and sacrifice. That last virtue is gone, and has been supplanted by "yeah, but how does that affect my pocketbook? What's in it for ME?" There will be serious, long-term, consequences. So much for my soap box. T