Can I sell you some energy?

Have I got a deal for you! I have two great energy products, one is coal and the other is oil! This is a can't miss deal.

Coal is plentiful and cheap! We mine it in areas where people are poor and the health and land problems are way less important than jobs. We either mine it, or when we can, we just dig it out of the ground or blow off the top of a mountain. We have to cut down a lot trees and use a lot of water but like I said, the people that live there are all for it...they have no other choice!

We take the coal just like it is and pile it into trains that ship it everywhere, that's why its so cheap! You build your power plant close to a rail siding and together we've got a great business! Just don't build it too close to any major metropolitan areas because of the, well, the stuff that comes out of the plant.

Burning coal for electricity has a couple of minor problems. The coal, when it's burned, emits a lot of bad stuff like sulfur, mercury, and even carbon dioxide. But who ever heard of anyone dying of carbon dioxide poisoning? But here is the beauty of coal, that stuff we put in the air, we don't really have to pay for it! No-one will charge you for all the fish with mercury in them, will they?

Bottom Line #1- Use all the coal fired electricity you want, it's cheap now and they will never trace climate change back to you!

If coal doesn't get you excited, oil will. We drill holes in the ground and pump this stuff up, send it to a plant that makes it into all kinds of stuff, but mostly gasoline for your car. What's even better is these days we don't even drill that much, we just buy if from those nice boys in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia etc. They have so much that they can ship it all the way over here and it's still cheap! That way we don't spoil the land or water around here, we let them do it to their land.

Now I know what you have heard about price instability, but look at it this way. It's still cheap. Sometimes it gets expensive but when it does we can just quit using it until the recession is over, easy no?

If we have trouble with a country who has a lot of oil, we can always get them back in line with diplomacy, and a few Marines. If that doesn't work, we will just send more Marines. But the cost wont go up that much and once we get them back in line, the price always comes down.

Now I know what you have heard about pollution and oil, gasoline, etc but hey, everything emits bad stuff when you burn it! And remember it's cheap!

Bottom Line #2 - Oil is cheap and chances are good that Iran's oil money wont allow them to build a nuclear device that can hit the US for at least ten years. So why worry?



The siren song of cheap is real. It's hard to say no to cheap energy. China doesn't want to, India either. A little cheap energy and before long your hooked. Everything becomes secondary to cheap energy... heath, economic stability, wars, environment, jobs, religion, morality, balance of trade, climate change etc...you'll sell your soul for this stuff.

We have traditionally sacrificed much in the name of cheap energy and grown to be a superpower. Why do we think others wont follow our lead into the abyss of cheap energy addiction? They have and will continue to, until...we show a better way.

Bottom Line #3 - We know the cost of cheap energy is too high. Those costs shake the very foundation of our economy and democracy. It's time for us to lead the world to new forms of energy and show them the road to prosperity isn't cheap energy, it's democracy, innovation, education, hard work, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and, peace.

Just say no to "cheap" energy.