When Smart People Miss the Point

Last night (07 Jul 08) on the McNeil-Lehr report there was a piece on alternative energy. During this segment there were a couple of very well educated PhD’s. I didn’t take time to write down their names – I was too busy screaming at the TV screen; PBS.org didn’t post the piece on their website. The jest of their comments was that the current price of energy is where it needs to be, and one individual even went so far as to advocate placing a floor on the price of crude oil so that it could never go below $40.00 a barrel. Their logic for this position was that the world would never rid itself of dependency on fossil base energy, if the price of crude oil is low. If I were oil producers and futures traders I would send those folks a big gift – maybe they already did?

While their logic is probably correct it would be, and is currently a disaster for you and I. These people Smart folks no doubt, but they totally missed the point and have moved to a remedy that ignores the basic and underlying cause of why we are in this energy waste land. That cause is simply the lack of leadership and integrity in Washington. It’s an outrage that any well-educated person would advocate a strategy to energy independence by bankrupting you and I, while the fat-cats reap enormous benefits.

The only fair and equitable strategy to energy independence and emissions control is through governmental policies and tax code modification that creates meaningful incentives for the development and deployment of alternative energy sources. The consumer will bare some of the cost – and rightly so – but the major part of the burden should be born by the oil industry.

Now tell me – don’t you think that if a guy like me, setting in his office in everyday America can see this, that your elected officials can see the same thing? Of course they can. When will they act? Only when people like you and I get mad enough to force them to it.
Here is a link that you can use to locate your Washington based elected officials:



Congress.org - Congressional Directory