.*.

NBC Refuses Pickens Plan Ad

One more comment. I wish we as a people would not panic about energy cost. Yes, it is going up, and that is not good. But it is not terrible either. It is just normal, like growing old, and sometimes getting a cold. It happens. When goods and services get scarcer, their prices rise. (Thought experiment: What would happen if their prices did not rise?) For instance....when whale oil prices rose at the turn of the last century, guess what happened? People went looking for alternatives. When they found it in the ground, whaling became an enterprise of the past. Lamps burned oil and a new era was formed. Government had nothing to do with the successful transition--it was all done by citizens in their roles as engineers, businessmen and women, and entrepreneurs. The depletion of oil truly represents nothing more dramatic than a transition: a transition from liquid oil extraction to all of the following: Nuclear ($30), gas ($30), wind ($100), membrane bioreactor (waste gas capture) ($100), shale ($120), oil sands ($100), coal gasification ($90), geothermal ($200), conservation ($50 and up). By the way, those numbers represent the price of oil at which those technologies become competitive with oil in a big way. Guess what happens when oil permanently reaches those prices? Absent government inteference, entrepreneurs will build new industries and make lots of money (as they should) supplying those sources of energy. All of those sources except shale and sands are very, very environmentally friendly. If you are a friend of the environment, you should pray, PRAY for the depletion of oil, because it will cause us to transition in an orderly fashion to nuclear, geo, wind, & membranes (no CO2 emissions). So everyone, please don't panic about energy. Panic only if the government gets involved doing anything other than leveling the playing field (pollution control) and honoring contracts. If it begins taxing and spending, predicting winners and loser, promoting an "industrial policy", look out. We will be in trouble. By the way, consider some benefits of higher gas prices: less driving, CO2, gas guzzlers, sulfur, NOX emissions, highway deaths/injuries, hospital visits, suburban sprawl, etc. More trains, stay-home vacations, family time, electric cars, hybrids, conservation, etc, etc. To summarize, increasing gas prices cause us to use less of a noxious, dwindling resource (good), and cause entrepreneurs and investors and engineers and business people to vigorously create profitable alternatives (good). If the government will get out of the way, in 100 years we will be talking about "drilling" the same way we we now talk about "whaling".

NBC Refuses Pickens Plan Ad

Please, Please PLEASE, Congress don't "do" ANYTHING about Energy. Except of course, GET OUT OF THE WAY!! Every time government "does" something about a problem, the problem worsens or creates even greater problems. Look at most of our most pressing problems: they are either PERSONALLY self inflicted (divorce, unwed parents, drug addiction, chronic unemployment, obesity, diabetes, lack of education despite education being available for free) OR government caused: lack of drilling leading to foreign oil dependence; stubbornly blocking nuclear energy leading to foreign oil dependence; government subsidized burning of food for energy (corn) leading to global food inflation and starvation; destroyed inner city schools due to government protected unions in control; lack of school choice for the poor due to the same unions; government funded public housing (drug and crime hell-holes); confiscatory tax rates leading to lack of investment in just about everything (energy, infrastructure, jobs, growth); government spending every cent of social secuity receipts instead of saving it; needless foreign wars; the list of government funded depredations against the our citizens GOES ON AND ON AND ON. The BEST thing possible for our country would be for government to return to being efficient and limited, that is, back to its original constitutional purpose of law and order, and leaving the citizens alone, including their money. Thank you. PS, you pay 50% of your income in taxes. If you don't believe that, add it up. Obama wants it to be 80%. McCain wants it to be 60%. Not much difference.