Subscribe Hurricanes and High Gas Prices
posted in political by jon on 2005-09-03
Watching the coverage of hurricane Katrina, I can't help but stare slack-jawed in amazement at the awesome power revealed in the storm; at witnessing the hand of God wiping entire cities off the map. Seeing New Orleans collapse, first under wind and water, now under flames and anarchy, is an oddly anachronistic sight; like watching a reenactment of the 1906 San Francisco quake where all the actors forgot to change out of their 21st century era clothes. It's unquestionably odd to see piles of rubble, decimated buildings, looting, refugees, uncontrolled fires, and realize that you're looking at scenes from a modern American city. It's difficult to even imagine what it must be like to see everything you've ever worked for, the buildings you see every day, your job, and maybe even people you know disappear overnight, and replaced by mud and heaps of rubble. My heart goes out to the people of all the areas hit by Katrina, whose lives will never be the same as they were before the storm.
Almost as soon as the Katrina's winds stopped blowing however, the media stepped up to fill the void with their own brand of hot air. The coverage of this hurricane is easilythe most damning evidence of media bias I've ever seen. To listen to the press, the President and his gang of Big Oil cohorts brewed up this hurricane, snuck all the white people out of New Orleans, and then hid all of the oil to drive up the price of gas. The most common emotional face worn by every member of the press was a kind of suprised indignation, as if this mess had to be somebody's fault, and it must be Bush's ( The worst of it is, while the Hurricane is simply a part of nature, their IS someone to blame for high gas prices....enviro-whacko, tree-hugging, anti-progress liberals ) While bloggers, policemen, firefighters, and rescue workers were warning about the dangerous armed gangs roaming the streets and attacking medical caravans, the press made certain to scoff endlessly at this, and imply, in barely veiled terms, that everyone else was either lying or cowardly. Reporters made sure to find angry people to whom they could ask leading questions about the President's response to the tragedy (bonus points for finding elderly people or mothers with infants).
Just in case anyone isn't paying attention, let's take a common sense look at some of the issues being talked about around the Hurricane.
Global Warming caused this Hurricane.
Short Answer: No, it didn't. You're an idiot.
Long Answer: First of all, human caused global warming is a theory. An unproven theory, backed for largely polictical reasons by a scientific community that hates America and resents our global dominance. The case is too long to argue completely here, but it boils down to this: yes, the planet is getting slightly warmer, but
a.) we don't really have records that far back so we don't know if we just started recording during a cool period.
b.) sunspot cycles are a more likely culprit than greenhouse gasses and
c.) even if man is causing it, it's not clear that it's a bad thing, since it could be keeping us out of another ice age.
Leaving that aside however, lets look at some basic facts
Nobody has proved that global warming leads to either greater hurricane frequency or intensity
There were far more hurricanes during the 1940s than in the 1990s
variations in the Atlantic Ocean Conveyer (water flow in the gulf) are far more likely to affect hurricanes than global warming.
This is hype, plain and simple, repeated to serve a political purpose.
It's OK to loot, as long as you need it
It's not OK to loot, no matter what. Looting is stealing, and it contradicts everything that America stands for. Ask someone why America is great, and they'll likely point to freedom of speech, advanced technology, or our strong military. They're wrong. The foundation of American greatness is rooted in two essential principles:
The Right to own property
The Rule of Law
Without the right to own property, freedom has no meaning. There IS no freedom without property; all other freedoms can be derived from this most fundamental right. You have a right to to control that which you own. This control is what we call freedom. The rights of free speech, and religion derive from the recognition that you own yourself, and can choose on your own what to say or believe. Other rights, such as freedom from searches and seizures, presuppose property ownership, and are meaningless without it.
The Rule of Law ensures that contracts are valid, that the laws are the same for both rich and poor, and that our republic doesn't descend into the mob rule of democracy. The rule of law ensure the stability of civilization, and allows banks and businesses to make far reaching plans, with the assurance that they can depend on a consistent legal environment, without being subject to the whims of a dictator or king.
In the end, circumstances may drive you to steal, but you're still a thief.
The Government isn't helping me fast enough
No, say rather that the govenment has been far too quick to help you in the past.
Watching people on TV, squawking indignantly at the failure of fairy-godmother government to drop out of the sky and hand them an ice cream cone and a new house, is a testimony of the culture produced by the welfare state. What law of nature dictates the responsibility of government to help you in you time of need? Think of this, if you aren't responsible for taking care of yourself, what right do you have to make ANY decision? How long does it take, sucking your sustenance from the great teat of govenment beneficience, before you become a slave. These are the same people who couldn't be troubled to haul their bodies out of the way of incoming danger, now complaining that someone else isn't running fast enough to bail rescue them from the results of their own judgement error. Govenment can, and usually does, come to the aid of citizens after a disaster, but that doesn't relieve you of responsibilty for yourself. Get up. Walk. Run. Crawl. Do whatever you need to do to get away from danger and cope with the situation.
We all need to conserve gas to save money
No, we need more, cheaper gas. And to do it, we need to get serious. Cheap, plentiful energy is vital to our economy. While we've spent the past 30 years handwringing about the plight of Alaskan caribou, we've ignored the growing fragility of our energy infrastructure. We've allowed eco-nazis to define the debate on energy use, while our refineries age and our energy demands increase. We point fingers back and forth about foreign oil dependence and global warming while our situation grows ever more precarious. This has got to end. Americans need to hold our leaders feet in the flames and demand, in no certain terms, that government get the hell out of the energy game.
We've allowed the govenment, by slow and steady measures, to hamstring our economic development by mucking around in energy policy. Pollution standard, drilling limits, gasoline additives, restrictions on nuclear plant building: it isn't the governments job to dictate where and how we get and use energy.
On gasoline:
Most of our current woes are directly the fault of idiot environmental policies. America, unbeknownst to many, is a large oil producer in it's own right: third in total production behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could produce far more. In fact, because of environmental regulation, we're producing less instead. America currently produces 39 percent less oil today than we did in 1973. Whenever you hear the phrase "growing dependence on foreign oil" remember, this is where that growth is coming from. That doesn't even count ANWR, the hotly disputed Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge that we've talked about drilling for years. It's estimated that we could pull 10.5 BILLION barrels of oil out of ANWR, not enough for energy independence, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
Even worse, assuming we did have all the oil we needed, we couldn't make gasoline out of it. The US hasn't built a new refinery in 30 years, and is already forced to buy refinery capacity elsewhere. And of course, regulations on how refineries operate are getting even stricter, meaning that capacity drops further as fewer refineries "qualify" under the new regulations. Complicating things even further, because emission regulations differ between states (California, I'm looking at you), refineries have to produce no fewer than 17 different types of gasoline.
You hear alot of talk lately about "alternative fuels" and the "hydrogen economy". Don't believe the hype. Alternative fuels are almost universally impractical, or pork projects (like ethanol). The "hydrogen ecomomy" is a happy fiction: hydrogen is just a storage medium for energy, not an energy source. Currently it takes more energy to produce hydrogen that it produces. Currently this means that we burn oil, coal, or natural gas to get the energy to extract the hydrogen. This is irony writ large. We could make the hydrogen economy work, if only we had some means to generate power cheaply, which brings me to ..
Nuclear Power:
Nuclear power could be the answer to all of our problems. Relative to other ways of producing power, it's cheap, clean and safe. Yet the government hasn't granted a new permit to build a new nuclear plant since 1979. Nuclear power is unreasonably feared by the American public, after a the most successful smear campaigns of the eco-movement.
Ironically, France has more nuclear plants than anywhere in Europe, generating 80% of it's power from nuclear energy, and actually exporting energy to it's neighbors, who struggle to keep the lights on using traditional electrical generation.
With a strong system of nuclear plants providing us with cheap electricity, America could more easily move to energy-negative technologies like hydrogen or electric cars, reducing the demand for gasoline.
