Filed by Bil at 7:31 pm under Environmentality, Fightin' Words, Politics

So — evidently, the Democrats couldn’t rally in the ninth to get the ban on offshore drilling renewed. Boo. What do I have against offshore drilling? Well, not a lot, really, mainly it’s that it could DESTROY THE WORLD.

Never mind that some places are still all-natural. Never mind that it’s a short-term solution to a recurring and immediate problem that will take more than five years to have an effect. Never mind that it delays the inevitability that we must ween ourselves off crude oil. Never mind that the potential for disastrous oil spills goes up when the amount of oil being carried across the water goes up. What really galls me is that the fucking oil companies win. I hate that.

Actually, it really is about weening ourselves off gas entirely. The reason this is an immediate issue is because the reserves we are currently drilling into are starting to run a little dry (speculatively, of course, no one is really sure WHEN they will run dry), and the pro-off-shore-drilling mouths are saying we need to open up new, untapped reserves. This tends to happen a few times each century, and everybody always forgets about the last time it happened, because – why? New, untapped reserves were tapped. Or, in some cases, currently-tapped foreign reserves were taken by our government and sold to us at lower prices.

Oh, stop. I’m sitting on my couch, eating apple pie, drinking beer, and watching baseball in the background. I don’t think my patriotism is in question.

This time around, the Republicans and Big Oil want to drill in Alaska, as well as offshore in other states on both coasts, which are all domestic. So the gas would be cheaper. In theory.

Here’s the thing. The gas will run out here, too. It is not an unlimited supply. There is a finite amount of crude oil in the Earth. This problem will come back in the future. I don’t doubt that it will offer some relief in the meantime, even if it’s not as much as they say it will, but the main issue is that it’s not permanent. It’s like Novocaine.

Now seriously. There are 21 different gas-electric hybrid vehicles available on the market today. By late next year there will be more. By 2010 or 2011 we may even have the Honda FCX Clarity and others like it being mass-produced. This is especially exciting, because a) the hydrogen-driven car produces not smoke, but water, and nowhere near as much heat as a regular combustion engine; and b) hydrogen is the most abundant substance in the universe. We can get hydrogen from other planets if we need to. We can’t get oil, but we can get hydrogen. And we can make hydrogen by breaking down all the shit we don’t use anymore, like plastic furniture and Stussy T-shirts.

Wind energy is making strides. Solar panels on individual houses are getting more and more popular. Why are we lagging? Why is the government squabbling over whether or not to allow drilling off-shore? Well, probably because Big Oil owns most of the government, but also probably because the fix seems to easy to resist. No one is against other forms of renewable energy (except Sarah Palin), but no one seems willing to make it happen. Would it be so hard for us to actually focus and work towards this goal? And would it kill us to put up with the high gas prices while we do it?

I dunno. Maybe that can be our new New Deal. The next Great Depression is just around the corner, so maybe the government can create jobs again building renewable energy devices and fancy new car engines. It worked with the Hoover Dam. Let’s do us one better.