Yeah, by now you probably have gotten the picture. Simply saying that America will be energy independent in ten years ain't gonna make it happen. The same folks who laud science above all other teaching in our schools seem to have ignored the science of the possible.
     You can't just assume there will be new technologies that will miraculously pull our chestnuts out of the fire. No possible "new technology" can replace the engines in the tens of millions of cars on the road in America. Tens of millions is a lot -- really. The simple reality is that we are stuck with oil or gas to power our cars for the forseeable future. Get real.
     Please don't suggest that electric cars will solve the problem. The new Chevy Volt® is proposed to go 40 miles on a single overnight charge from your household current. Yeah, and? You just burned three times as much energy to go those 40 miles as you would have with petroleum. Doesn't sound like a "solution" to us.
     We spent time in the 1970's opposing nuclear plants -- even testified before the House and Senate a couple times. We didn't oppose them because they were unsafe. We opposed them because of the net energy balance involved. Heavily subsidized radioactive fuels made them marginally practical from a dollars and cents standpoint. But it took more energy to refine the fuels, build and stock the plant, than would be produced in the 25 year practical life of that plant.
     You'll be surprised that we advocate the construction of nuclear plants today! No, the net energy balance hasn't changed. But we see nuclear plants as a sneaky way to burn coal. You see, we burn coal to refine the uranium, and no one sees us doing it, so suddenly nuclear becomes "clean, non-polluting" energy. At least until it comes time to decommission the plant. And we can simply pass that problem on to our grandkids.
     The radical environmentalists hate coal -- dirty, nasty smoke creating coal. Ugh! Doesn't matter that fully half of all the electricity in this country is generated by burning coal. THe newest mantra is to talk about "clean-burning coal". Yeah, yeah. Everyone is in favor of clean.
     Of course, President William Jefferson Clinton put the largest single deposit on the planet -- right here in America -- of the best burning low-sulfur coal off limits with a stealth executive order creating a 1.7 million acre chunk of Utah as a new National Monument. Probably not noticing that this action would have some monetary benefit for his friend and illegal million dollar campaign contributor James Riadi, who just happened to own large low-sulfur coal holdings in Asia. We don't remember the left-stream media being the least bit concerned about this possible corruption.

     Under the new Obama Administration with a rubber-stamp Congress, it is really unlikely that we'll be doing any offshore drilling in the next four years. Nor are we going to do any drilling in Anwar. Let's be practical.
     But that is really the only way, in light of realistic technological advances, that we will be able to reduce our dependence on Venzuela and the Middle East. Maybe a miracle will happen. We can at least pray for that outcome.
     Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did put forward one way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels: she suggested that we could use Natural Gas, evidently totally clueless that Natural Gas is a fossil fuel. These are the folks that get elected time after time, but still have the cojones to say that Sarah Palin is the ignorant one.
     Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has attempted to push the "Drill Here, Drill Now" agenda over the past six months, but with little success. The Republican's philosopher maintains a web site you may want to visit: Newt.org

     President-elect Obama proposed during his campaign that we should all use public transportation or alternative transportation more often. Spoken like a true city dweller. The folks out here in the red counties don't have that option. For example, we live 30 miles from the nearest supermarket. 60 mile round trip to get groceries. There are no buses, no light rail or subways. No Chicago Loop, either.
     Bicycles aren't the solution in this country. Yeah, we know. China, for example, being more enlightened than we are, gets by with millions of bicycles. But a 30 mile jaunt on a bicyle towing a trailer to haul the groceries home is difficult -- even somewhat time-consuming. Probably take oldsters like us five hours each way. Would be healthy, though. A real cardio workout.

     Congress is very capable of instituting requirements for manufacturers of vehicles that are less than realistic. In 1990, General Motors marketed the Chevrolet Geo Metro, a four door hatchback vehicle that got 58 highway miles per gallon right off the showroom floor. (Compare that to today's miraculous Toyota Prius achieving 42 miles per gallon highway mileage)
     What happened? The damn thing just didn't sell well enough in that 3 cylinder configuration to justify further production. Plus, of course, it didn't cost enough. A $45,000 Prius Hybrid has to be much, much, much better than an $8000 Metro. Good things cost more, right? Perfume off the shelf from the corner drugstore for $3 just can't be as good as Chanel #5 from Paris at $300. "You get what you pay for," goes the saying. Of course, it isn't true. Is a $100,000 luxury car really better than a $25,000 car? Probably not. Folks can be easily fooled into paying tons more for the status of owning something special.
     Back in 1978 we patented a Low Energy Consumption Vehicle. (The Patent -- United States Patent 4131171 -- expired in 1995) It featured a low technology constant profile steel flywheel to store energy from a small stationery engine and a hydrostatic transmission. The prototype we built got 90 mpg and accelerated from 0 to 60 in less than 6 seconds. Here's the sad part: we couldn't give the technology away, let alone sell it.
     The patent is now in the public domain and available to anyone for free. Here's a link to the description: Free Patents Online. But the car manufacturers nowadays prefer to work with batteries and electric motors. Go figure...
     But back to the point. There are a number of the leftists who feel the entire energy crisis can be solved just by being less wasteful, by conserving more. It goes hand in hand with their notion that this country is deeply flawed. That we need to be better world citizens. Didn't we just hear something about that during a speech in Berlin?
     The increasing CAFE standards arise out of this notion. It is, of course, just plain silly. There is only so much conservation possible before our standard of living would fall below acceptable limits.
     The folks proposing this radical stuff don't need to conserve, themselves. They'll continue to be profligate with their energy utilization because they are special. It's just important that the rest of us begin sacrificing. That will make things all better...