Replies

I'll bet that Mr. Sobieski would be surprised to read his letter here.

bump list request

It was wishful thinking about solar, wind and hyrdopower that got California into its crisis.

I highlight wind because the windmills have been a maintenance nightmare. On any given day at least a third will be nonoperational due to mechanical problems in some areas. Oh well, if we increase them by 700% we'll be in good shape...

You might think that the obvious answer would be to build more power plants in California.

You might think the governor of that state would be encouraging more plants to be built there.

Good thing Gray Davis is governor, huh?

He hit it right on the money. Nuclear. There has been no better energy option for thirty years. Had we gone nuclear, we wouldn't have financed our enemies with petrodollars. How did Russia finance its buildup? High oil prices in the 70s. How did Reagan kill that? He decontrolled oil prices, BUT HE NEVER UNLOCKED NUCLEAR AND THE BIGGEST THING IN THE WAY WAS A CARTER EXECUTIVE ORDER BANNING FUEL REPROCESSING pursuant to a single study by GreenPIECE funded by the Ford Foundation (gosh, what do their cars run on?).

How does Al Quaeda pay for its weapons? How does Iraq pay for its weapons? How does Libya pay for its weapons? What has and will it cost us to defend ourselves against enemies we finance with petrodollars? Wasn't there an alternative?

Instead we let the RICOnuts place legal restrictions on the competitors to foreign oil. Who sponsored those restrictions? Who fed the environmental hysteria? Who is the biggest collective sponsor of environmental groups? Who founded the Environmental Grantmakers Association? Who are the biggest sponsors of the UN? Along with international banking investors, the charitable foundations of major oil industry stockholders: Rockefeller, Pew, Prince Berhnard, Phillips, the British Royal Family... oil.

Were the alternatives viable? Coal? Natural gas? Nuclear? Trip reduction through broadband? If one added the cost of supporting the military infrastructure to maintain our industrial expansion and acquisition of raw materials abroad to the price of the products we import, I doubt very much that all that foreign entanglement would look like a good deal because of the risk of nationalization and war. If you add the risk to our liberty, the safety of our families and children, the threat of our own government, and the internal regulatory cost driven by UN treaties, I doubt very much that it would look like a good deal.

The pattern is repeating in other resource markets where we have plentiful resources and end up importing because of environmental restrictions. We import timber to the Pacific Northwest, minerals from China that are available just above Los Angeles, and now even food. If we don't learn our lesson very soon about the price of liberty and the cost of risk, we will lose the first and pay for the second anyway.

Excellent article.

Who is Daniel John Sobieski, Chicago, and why would he be surprised to see his letter to IBD here?