The Trouble with Presidents

The Presidential Debate is on tonight. Both candidates are saying they did this or did that or will do this or will do that. Know what? Neither has the authority to do a fraction of what they're claiming. Most is done by Congress. All they can do is sign it into law, likely MONTHS later. They're taking credit for things done by other people. The little Kenyan keeps blathering about renewable energy, the same day that A123 battery company declared bankruptcy. The same battery company that was supposed to supply batteries for the Chevy Volt and free America from the Tyranny of Oil. So much for that. Romney and Obama are both full of crap about energy, but they might not know it. You can throw as much money at it as you want, but the outcome is this: we got the easy oil already. Only the expensive and lousy stuff is left. Their advisors don't tell them that.

This is how they think:

America is largely ignorant of the problems with Fossil Fuels. It runs out. It is running out. It has been running out since 1970, when America had to import it. Since 1980, OPEC has been consistently lying about their reserves. They're in the last 7% now, not the last 49% like they claim. They're a couple or three years away from shutdown, thus the ever rising price of oil and production cuts enable them to keep the game going. That's the reality. Its not about "speculators". That's a Con.

Its a nice claim to think that more drilling and more processing of existing energy sources in the Domestic USA will help us get free from foreign oil. Good luck. Renewables aren't easy. They're expensive. Very expensive. They're time consuming and require maintenance or rare earth elements to work, and they're worth stealing or risk breakage. There's good reason they aren't popular already. If they were good, they'd have been in use since 1970. Not so much. Most of the Altamont Wind Turbines are down at any given time. I've driven the pass many times. That's the ugly truth. There's a lot that can go wrong with them, and frequently DOES.

Someday, if science and chemistry allows, there may be a battery that everyone can have and is cheap to make and contains no rare earth elements. That will solve the energy crisis, because it will effectively replace a tank of gasoline. Until this magical battery is invented, when the oil runs out, we're walking. Smart people will bicycle. In time we'll recover far enough to have scooters. But that's about as good as it gets. Pedal into the future. You don't get a choice. Not really. Presidents don't get votes by telling us to suck it up. They get votes telling us what we want to hear: that lying about throwing money at oil drilling and coal will fix it, will enable us to keep Easy Motoring well into the future. That life won't change anymore. Sorry. It just not that easy. I hope you look good in spandex bicycle clothes. I don't.