Power is Everything

Whoa, whoa, guys--Power is everything. Without it they don't talk to us, they don't correct the trajectory, they don't turn the heat shield around.

And so it goes. Most of you will remember that is the quote from Apollo 13, the movie with Tom Hanks. Well, Power is Everything, energy is everything on our planet and I wonder if the folks at the Department of Energy know that; I wonder if the theocratic environmentalists understand it, because it doesn't appear to me that anybody in Washington DC seems to be worried about it.

Health, prosperity and progress depends on power; not political power but the kind we get that makes engines run, turns on lights and warms and cools us. I don't see much of anything going on and I haven't for some time. We are under capacity in oil refining, we haven't really thought of building any nuclear power plants. (It was heartening to hear President Obama mention a couple of weeks ago that we need to do more in this area, but we'll see.)

People think it is a great idea to build those avian osterizers that chop up birds and make a little electricity when the wind blows. Geothermal output looks decades if not centuries away and as carbon is politically cursed it is practically the cheapest, easiest and best method to make power.

Without more power we can't turn this thing around that we are stuck in right now; this anemic and sputtering economy that has received stimuli that have been declared successful though I don't see much happening and I don't expect much.

Our economic house needs to be put in order and it cannot happen without more power; more and cheaper energy. I don't know why people think that is so hard to understand.