Ahh yes, it's time for another update. I saw a headline this morning that the military is looking to decrease it's dependence on fossil fuels. The very first thing I thought was, "oh God, Obama, Gore and the rest of them have gotten their hooks in and told the military to do something that may put our troops in harms way". When I read the article, I saw that, in fact, there were good reasons in this case for using energy sources other than fossil fuel, namely that the fuels had to be transported and guarded across dangerous territories, whereas other forms of energy wouldn't require the same attention. In other words, it would be a BENEFIT to the troops, not a hindrance passed down from above.
To this, my first thought was "good, more fuel for us". And it's true. There's no reason for us not to use fossil fuels at home. We're not in harms way, we don't have to transport and guard our fuels through dangerous places the way our military does in foreign lands. We have money, we have cars, we have roads and gas stations, for God's sake we should have gas too!
Then another happy thought occurred to me. When the wind stops, when mechanical power generation devices break down, when the sun don't shine....there will still be gas in my tank. When the do-gooder with the solar panels is cold, he'll knock on my door because my gas pipes will still be delivering the smelly stuff. When the windmill stops and the lights go out next door, the coal plant will still be churning out power for my lights. When all of those alternate means of generating power fail, suddenly people will realize the brilliance of fossil fuels. The little drop of sunshine that causes your life to be better.
Consider this: the sun shines, and we get energy from it, in the form of the plants that grew, and the dinosaurs that ate those plants (or other dinosaurs that ate the dinosaurs that DID eat those plants) and then they died, and they left us gasoline, coal, and natural gas. It's all right there, in all it's natural goodness, all a direct result of the sun, and all we need to do is take it and refine it. If you had the chance to benefit from something given to us by the sun, and you didn't, wouldn't you be WASTING a perfectly good natural resource?
