Politics of the Easy Answer

As much as I hate to admit it, Barrack Obama is right. Suspending the gas tax for the summer would not bring down gas prices long term. The savings would not really amount all that much for the average American. While I am all for cutting taxes, the temporary suspension of the gas is a ridiculous idea. It is nothing more than a campaign ploy by those advocating it, namely McCain and Clinton. It amounts to buying votes.

While Obama is right about that, his energy policy is wrong. Energy independence means drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. One thing confuses me about the debate over drilling in Alaska. Somehow, it is environmentally unfriendly. What environment are we trying to protect. This semester I had a student who lived in Barrow, Alaska, which is as far north as one can get in the United States. (The next thing after Barrow, Alaska is Santa's house.) She commented that there is noting up there but ice and mud. There are no trees, bushes or anything green. On top of that it is night for about two months each year.

This is a symptom of our time. Everyone wants an easy answer. Everyone wants an immediate solution. Everyone wants the fix now. NOW! I tell, you, NOW! In an era of the Internet, microwaves and other tools that give us instant gratification, we need to realize that some answers take time.

We also need to realize that gas prices will never again be $1.00 a gallon. Those days are gone, along with the horse and buggy.

The Law of Unitended Consequences

In an effort to "protect the planet," environmentalists have forced upon us ethanol. Corn bases gasoline costs more and is less efficient than regular gas. Now we have discovered that shoving edible food into our gas tanks has caused food prices to rise. Here is a column from Fox.

This is the latest in a long line of environmentalists messing up our lives, and ultimately upsetting the environment and the market.

About ten or fifteen years ago, there was the big debate over paper versus plastic shopping bags. We were accused of killing trees if we wanted paper bags. Think about this: paper bags are biodegradable; plastic bags are made from petroleum, which we could be putting in our cars.

In the last few years, we have been ordered to use fluorescent light bulbs instead of Edison's incandescent light bulb. Now we discover that the fluorescent bulbs have mercury in them, which is harmful to the environment and a person's health.

If you want to help the planet, prevent an environmentalist from doing anything for the environment.

Happy Earth Day

Today is Earth Day.

The whole debate over global warming and the "save the planet" stuff started me thinking. We have all this irrefutable evidence that within a matter of years we will be buried by the oceans or just burn up from really hot temperatures.

About a century ago, there was irrefutable evidence that Jews were lesser humans. Biologists, social scientists, psychiatrists and others in the science profession did numerous studies and conducted wide ranging research and drew the conclusion that Jews were inferior to just about every other race on the planet.

One hundred years later, we look back on those studies and roll our eyes at the methods they used. They did such things as measure the size of a person's head, which was thought to measure intelligence. They examined every part of the body. They did (what we would consider crazy and unethical) medical experiments on people. We now realize that the science they were practicing was junk science or pseudo-science.

It all makes me wonder what those living a century from now will think about our science of global warming. Do you notice that it is no longer called "global warming"? Recent studies have shown that the temperature is leveling off over the past ten years. It also seems ridiculous to talk about global warming when the upper Midwest and northeast faced record cold and snowfall this past winter. It is now called "climate change," which is a convenient catch-all no matter what direction the weather is heading (more storms, fewer storms, higher temperatures, lower temperatures).

Think about this when you go off to hug a tree.