An article in Reuters today said that in a poll of 522 Americans released Wednesday (June 16th), we supposedly still support offshore drilling and that offshore drilling is critical for the US to be competitive on the world stage. On a scale from zero to ten, representing no support through total support respectively, the 522 respondents averaged 6.3. As one would expect, support was about two points higher for Republicans than Democrats. It’s unknown whether any of the 522 contacted lived along the Gulf coast in the path of the spill.
Good to know, but just because most Americans back something doesn’t make it the right path to follow. History teaches us that many times it’s the difficult or unfamiliar choices that prove to be the best. I can only imagine that in the year 1902 most Americans might have backed support for horses, carriages, and stables just as the country was on the verge of accepting the automobile as a widespread personal transportation shift away from horse-drawn modes. I wonder if the powerhouse companies who made carriages and who marketed in horse breeding and selling stuffed the pockets of the House and Senate members to block any laws that may favor fledgling car companies. No one is left alive to tell us whether the infrastructure that was in place to support the horse, buggy, and wagon way of moving people and goods around made such a drastic shift without any strain or difficulty toward engine-powered modes of travel. Here we are in 2010 having the nerve to say we can’t have hydrogen powered cars or electric cars or bio-fuel cars because none of the gas stations are set up to supply the appropriate energy sources to the new vehicles. Boo freakin’ hoo! How many gas stations were around in 1902? It didn’t keep us from getting cars on the road.
It’s time to make the transition now. Don’t wait to see which technology will prevail. Try them all and let the marketplace sort it out. After all, the first cars were run not only by gasoline, but some ran on steam, or vegetable oil (now formulated as diesel fuel), or batteries. At one point, there were even more electric vehicles on the road somewhere at the dawn of the 20th century than there were gasoline cars. Technologies came and went as did the car companies. Here we are a hundred years later facing a different world of fuel supply, geo-petro-political tension, and environmental damage totally unforeseen by our great grandparents. I think not only are we ready for a new shift in the way things are done with regard to transportation specifically and energy use in general, I believe this transformation is LONG overdue.
As for the 6.3 score of support for offshore drilling? I would surmise that a large chunk of that score is based on our sense of comfort because it’s just the way things have to be to get gas in our cars and airplanes and keep us going. It’s the status quo. However, we are up to our tinfoil hats with the ramifications of maintaining the way things have to be. Why has America suddenly become so reluctant to change? Our history is based on changes. Okay, some of the changes didn’t turn out so great, but stagnation will certainly kill us and cost us a lot of global credibility on our way down. By the way, what happened to the big buggy and wagon manufacturers? They either made the shift to building cars, building something else the early 20th century needed, or went into the dustbin. Why can’t the giants of the energy-petro-chemical-political-corporate world do the same again? Shell made a stab at it. BP (believe it or not) once had a line of solar panels. BP, however, spent more money on designing and marketing their new green sunflower logo than they did on their solar panels. But that’s another story. It’s time we face the music and accept, rather, WELCOME change. To quote Oat Willie, “Onward, through the fog!”
[By the way, if you missed it, try to find a way to watch Jon Stewart’s, “The Daily Show” from June 16, 2010. It was the best I’ve seen, but the real zinger was his playing clips of EVERY president from Obama all the way back to Richard Nixon all saying that the nation must finally get serious about becoming energy independent.]