PLAN USA

PLAN USA

Action Plan for USA Energy Independence

It might focus our collective minds if we develop a Manhattan type project about energy independence. Call it Project USA, but this time with the government actively supporting it, not controlling it. Our energy industry is more than capable of doing what they have been waiting to do for years already. The primary objective is to rapidly increase production of fossil fuels as well as nuclear power, clean coal and any other energy source that could be competitive without government subsidies on the North American Continent.

A few things need to be kept in mind.

1 We must remember at all times that the doomsday scenarios painted by the eco-crowd are false and can be ignored.

2 We must remain sensitive to the long term need to use energy much more efficiently.

3 Our economy, as it exists, needs to be kept operating at full tilt on the conventional fuels of today, i.e. many years yet.

4 Currently popular and heavily subsidized "alternative" energy sources should be phased out or turned over to unsubsidized private investors. These alternatives are not the answer today. Only conventional fuels will save our economy, industry and defense posture, whether we like it or not.

5 To increase fossil fuel production and refining and to build many more nuclear and clean coal power plants and their associated infrastructure will take many years and huge investments. To get really moving on this project, permitting processes would need to be significantly improved and speeded up. NIMBY objections, except in extreme cases, should not be allowed to hold up construction plans.

6 It goes without saying that we must have more than adequate fuel stocks for our military, our airlines as well as our economy at large. None of these operations should be put in jeopardy because of short-sighted or ill conceived governmental edicts.

For those who believe we do not have the requisite fossil fuel stocks required for such a program let me remind them of a few facts.

The United States market currently uses about 20 million barrels of crude oil per day of which domestic production supplies 10%, with about 15% coming from our neighbors in Canada and Mexico while roughly 75 % is imported from overseas. Since US economic viability and growth are critically dependent on readily available energy supplies, the urgency of reducing our dependence on over 75% of our current expensive imports is obvious.

Relatively recent confirmation of enormous new oil finds in the Saskatchewan, Montana and Dakotas area, estimated at 500 billion barrels of readily available good quality crude, together with projected finds in Pennsylvania and Alaska and of course the large potential off-shore finds, add up to many decades more of domestic fossil fuel to drive our economy while we rework it to prepare ourselves for new energy sources after 2040-2050 or thereabouts.

The whole North American continent also has considerable sources of geothermal, hydropower, oil sands and gas, not to forget roughly 1000 years of coal deposits. This suggests the possibility from a purely market and economics point of view, that there may be merit in creating a North American energy market, benefiting an overall population of 450 million people.


For all these reasons and considerations, to rapidly realize energy independence is a justified and essential priority for the USA. And here is another reason we should do so.

China and India and Russia and Brazil are all doing exactly what I propose and with a vengeance. They know that energy independence is a must, politically and strategically and consequently are spending big bucks to grow their domestic options as well as acquiring as many foreign points of supply as possible. Currently and in contrast, our large and still growing dependence on foreign sources of supply makes us increasingly vulnerable to arm-twisting at some point, if not blackmail on an international scale.

Therefore a complete overhaul of our thinking is necessary to deal with the issue effectively, sooner rather than later. And it seems appropriate to do so now because America's citizens need to understand clearly what the stakes are in order to make the correct choices come next November's election.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the reasons why we have been fighting in the Middle East for 6½ years already, which conflict, by the way, may last considerably more time yet in order to achieve the Western World's strategic goals, it does not change the necessity of starting a major domestic campaign towards energy independence now. Only then will we stop sending our money abroad to buy foreign oil at inflated prices. Reducing our dependence on this off-shore oil will help to stop the further deflation of the value of our dollar. We just cannot export ourselves out of this mess because foreigners do not buy enough of our products and services to make up the difference. A real run on the dollar therefore could become a possibility. Not a pretty picture.

To recap, our economy is currently winding down, in part as a result of irresponsible financial operations by some banks and other financial institutions associated with the housing market, but also exacerbated by the manipulations of certain foreign oil suppliers. Our current economic and political situation is fundamentally a result of our national indulgence in misleading and unrealistic environmental concerns which have virtually stopped the necessary expansion of our own energy industry during the past 40 years. We are now paying huge penalties for our earlier economic follies and lack of appreciating the dilemma we were placing ourselves into vis a vis off-shore energy suppliers. The chickens have finally come home to roost.

The time for action is now!

National Insanity?

National insanity? 5/27/2008


A comment made by our President, George W. Bush, a while back when he urged the USA "to get off oil", strikes me as bizarre, coming from our Government's Chief Executive. It was a poor choice of words, I'm sure, because we can no more "get off" oil than we can "get off" food. Then the news article went on to say, correctly, that we must do this because we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That indeed is the crux of our problem. So why haven't we done that years ago already and what has been holding up this parade.??

The relatively short answer to this question is the current political and media power of those who believe that Western civilization has been ravaging Mother Earth and needs to be stopped. They claim that mankind is bad for nature and causing the world to warm up as a result, although there is no convincing scientific evidence that this is so, notwithstanding the loud cries to the contrary by the "Earth-Firsters" who claim to know better. That's all sales talk.

But during the past 30 years or so they have found ways to impose ever broader restrictions on our society under the banner of saving the environment, including the air we breathe. Who can disagree with that? But what their efforts and claims really amount to and what is ultimately their final objective, is to make us severely reduce the use of fossil fuels, coal, nuclear power etc. which make modern civilization possible. This is not based on any reputable science, it is their deeply held but misguided belief, like a phony religion. Such attitudes make reasoning difficult.

Because the rich Western world has plenty of people who can dedicate their time and efforts to such a cause, "environmentalism" became the early weapon to this end and has since merged with the global warming crowd.

These environmentalists, you might call them the eco-crowd, have been extraordinarily clever and successful in thwarting our power industry's efforts to stay one step ahead of growing demands for energy for our expanding population. When global warming came along the eco-crowd were quick to steer the media and many sympathetic politicians in the direction of a less "polluting" and simpler way of life by severely reducing coal and fossil fuel use.

But, we now may have reached a moment in time when we literally put ourselves on the road to political impotence as a great power, since we put ourselves more and more at the mercy of our overseas oil suppliers to the point where the President of the USA has to pay visits to the oil Sheiks asking them to please open the oil spigots some more. And then he is REFUSED. If this is not embarrassing to a great country that uses its own military to defend those oil barons from some of their unsavory neighbors, I don't know what is?? And now the European Union, another one of our stalwart allies, is moving once more to force the USA to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Obviously there is more at work here than meets the eye. If we do not turn back from this Kyoto Protocol nonsense it will tie us down like Swift's Gulliver.

This, in my and many others' opinion is the real cause of our current dilemma. Because so much personal effort and time of all these "greens, media honchos, politicians and global warmers" has gone into this effort they will stop at nothing and do almost anything to prevent their losing this ball game. Only very strong political leadership may be able to put this genie back into the bottle! And the sooner the better.

Major parts of our western population have been thoroughly misled for years already by certain intellectually dishonest scientists, politicians and media figures. The public has been subjected for so long to one scary, doomsday scenario after another that it probably does not believe anybody anymore. It sits and waits for whatever to happen. But that is no future for a great, fundamentally good and powerful country to contemplate. We Americans must realize that we are being had by a big bunch of very self-serving, power-hungry people, interested only in driving the USA into the One World embrace of the United Nations.

We will be shackled, impotent and despised for ever. Is that why our Founding Fathers created the USA? Shame on us.












5/26/2008

Action plan

We must develop a Manhattan type project about energy independence. Call it Project USA, but this time with the government supporting it, not controlling it. Our energy industry is more than capable of doing what they have been waiting to do for years already. The primary objective is to rapidly increase production of fossil fuels as well as nuclear power, clean coal and any other energy source that could be competitive without government subsidies on the North American Continent. We have lots of all of these!!








1 Our economy, as it exists, needs to be kept operating at full tilt on the conventional fuels of today for a long time yet.

2 Currently popular and heavily subsidized "alternative" energy sources should be phased out or turned over to unsubsidized private investors. These alternatives are not the answer. Only more conventional fossil fuel will save our economy, industry and defense posture, whether we like it or not.

3 To increase fossil fuel production and refining and to build many more nuclear and clean coal power plants and their associated infrastructure will take many years and huge investments. To get really moving on this project, permitting processes would need to be significantly improved and speeded up. NIMBY objections, except in extreme cases, should not be allowed to hold up construction plans.

Presidential candidate qualifications

3/12/2008

Presidential Candidates?

It seems to me that the world is still a dangerous place and getting worse every month, at least I haven't read anything sensible lately that seriously disagrees with that observation.

Assuming that this opinion, at least for argument's sake, is somewhat valid then it baffles me that there is so much discussion already about presidential candidate personalities without the benefit of some kind of plausible analysis of the world arena in which they and we will operate.
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of agitation against the fact that we have been in the Middle East for almost 5½ years without a clear story book victory over the bad guys.
The only explanation for the fact that may be half the country would vote for withdrawal must be that President Bush has been unable to make clear to the public how high the stakes really are and not only in the Middle East.

It seems to me that as a country we are suffering from what could be a fatal dose of multiculturalism or something like it, because to our liberal brethren in particular, it seems anathema to defend ourselves against what is clearly a fanatic and well organized attack against western civilization.
For those who do not believe that this is so, I would refer them to any number of sage analyses published during he past 5 years that persuasively spell out what should be obvious to anyone who values our western culture, warts and all, over any other one.
(Try the following: "Knowing the enemy" by Mary Habeck, "The Foreigner's Gift" by Fouad Ajami, "Between war and peace" by Victor D. Hanson, "America alone" by Mark Steyn, "Islam unveiled" by Robert Spencer, to name a few).

There are millions of people in the world who cannot just leave us alone even if we do not invade them but who decided, for their particular reasons, to declare us their enemy. Under their own religious code of conduct and belief this decision gives them an untrammeled license to murder any Western citizen, particularly Americans, as well as all those who are considered in our camp, so to speak.

We have seen too many examples of the seriousness of their intent during the past 30 plus years and even more so during the past 6 for anyone to question that these people mean murderous business. This is a war of a totally different kind than the conventional conflicts of the past. Civilian populations are combatants in the eyes of our self professed enemies and we better take them seriously or, before long, you will not be around to march in parades calling the President names.

Therefore, unless a "presidential candidate" begins his quest by setting out a comprehensive and persuasive vision of how he sees the world today, there is no way the electorate can make an intelligent decision about the candidate's necessary qualifications.

After all, running for president is fundamentally no different than trying to find a promising and responsible job in any large organization. The difference is that the people interviewing the candidates for a job, whether in business, education or elsewhere, know precisely what the environment is like in which the job candidates would work to help solve some known problems or expand some promising opportunities.

But electing a political president of the USA is done without most people having a clue as to what a candidate needs to bring to the job because we, as the electorate, only have our own view of what the world is like and what the primary threats and options really are. Because a president must work in the real world, not some idealized or fictitious world, the electorate deserves and needs to know how the individual really looks at the global issues. Our national, and our cultural existence may well be at stake here.

Consequently, I would recommend that we all put our minds to work about how we can come up with a convincing analysis of today's very complicated world that would help us decide which candidate might be most appropriate for the job.

In my humble opinion, domestic politics, at this stage, should take a back seat to dealing with the murderous threat coming our way from the fanatic Middle East. It is time to put some backbone into our political and media world and make them realize this is no time for cheap politics, nor for power hungry personalities who have neither the stomach nor the capabilities for leading the Western world to a successful defense of our precious national inheritance, for the preservation of which millions have given their lives in the past. Unfortunately and historically it is again a time for testing our national resolve in order to defeat those who hate us for their own reasons and want to eradicate us and our democratic way of life.

Glib pronouncements by a number of current Senators and Congressmen that we must stop all this Middle East warfare and get out now, only proves that they are totally unaware of what the Western World is really faced with today. Only their willful ignorance and lack of seriousness is saving them from being labeled cowards and incompetents, if not traitors.

The terrorists are very astute in their ability to read the US political scene and from their point of view they have us half on the run already even though they may be seriously hurting themselves.
It makes sense for them to throw every last body into this fight to kill as many innocent civilians together with all military personnel they can right now, because it is a matter of faith on their part that the West is more likely to crack than they will. Hence, while we have a preponderance of organized military power at our disposal, we seem to lack the broad support here at home which would make a winning outcome for us more probable.

While it certainly can be argued that serious mistakes were made in the post combat phase of the Iraq campaign, a fully supportive media and Congress would have approved any promising action the President would have proposed. Instead, the Congress and large parts of the electorate decided to play for short term electoral gain, aided masterfully by gross Republican incompetence and weak leadership.
This is a shameful situation and of our own making.

The consequences of not getting control of the Middle East issue will have very painful and long-term consequences for the USA and the West in general, in my opinion.

So what kind of individual seems most promising to get us out of this box?

Surely a TV and Media personality contest is not going to do it. We have been lucky with the President we have because his instincts are correct. He knows WHAT needs to be done but the Executive and Legislative parts of our government have failed him badly.
Because I have lived through a lot of history including WW II, I have a distinct "déja vu" feeling about our current predicament. When it finally dawns on us that the enemy really means business, 9/11 being considered unconvincing to many, we will go all out and fight but we will be incurring much greater costs and casualties than would have been required if we had just nipped the evil in the bud while we could. We are putting that possibility virtually out of reach now because the existing, primarily liberal, anti-Presidential animosity and its disloyal and unprincipled treatment of our current Administration's war efforts, make success in Iraq and Afghanistan pretty tenuous right now.

It is a time for serious soul searching but not of the handwringing kind, but of national pride in the principles which continue to make our country the envy of most of the world and which principles need defending from time to time. challenging current generations to show their mettle and willingness to do what their fathers and grandfathers did for them in the past.

To believe that "we have a right" to live our lives any way we like is not only puerile selfishness but plain stupid, because the world will continue to be a dangerous place for a long time to come. Tall trees catch a lot of wind as they say hence we will continue to be in somebody's gunsights whether we like it or not. As a consequence we must be willing and able to defend ourselves whenever and wherever the enemy strikes, including pre-emptive operations.

In sum, the enemy is at our gates and we better stop arguing amongst ourselves and get ready to take a lot of unpopular actions to salvage our civilization and it's future. Most importantly, this is not the time for a Presidential candidate's popularity contest but a time for critical assessment of the individual's character, ethics, previous experience and an ability to project persuasive actions to win this war we are in and give the world another chance at improving, rather than destroying, itself.