Neo-Luddites and Oil Addiction

I am ashamed to say that I have wrestled with pigs this week - not real pigs mind you, but energy pigs. Folks who refuse to acknowledge that, despite all the evidence, and despite their obvious American patriotism, that Oil Is Dead as America's - and the world's - primary energy source. Because of these Neo-Luddites' addiction to oil, they refuse to see that continued reliance on combusting petroleum-based hydrocarbons for everything from home heating to transportation is the single biggest threat to national security that the United States faces. They refuse to acknowledge that we all have a problem.

These Neo-Luddites see renewable energy - solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal generation of electricity as fodder for derision and scorn. There minds are closed. You can almost hear their piggy snorts, as they willingly keep sucking from the oil teat of the Middle East. And they refuse to be weaned from that teat - one even going so far as to say "I don't have a problem."

Step 1 of every addiction recovery system is admitting you have a problem.

If you aren't familiar with Luddites - and what the Luddite Movement was - you can find an excellent article on Wikipedia on the history. For this piece, suffice it to say that the Neo-Luddites are refusing to accept or adopt the technological changes in how energy is manufactured, distributed, and used, and refuse to accept that their lifestyle may need to change as a consequence.

The types of derision I received in a word battle with these Neo-Luddites were akin to listening to an alcoholic saying they don't really need another drink - and then asking the bartender for one more. At first you might feel sorry for the alcoholic's sad state of addiction - but then you grow angry because you know they are going to get behind the wheel of a car unless someone intervenes.

The U.S. Congress is looking at doing that intervention, as it hammers at Big Oil to stop looking at themselves as Oil Businesses, and start thinking of themselves as Energy Companies. What Congress found out (more likely, already knew) was that the largest of the Big Oil companies - Exxon/Mobil - is putting a mere pittance of its massive profits into the movement away from oil as the primary energy source of the nation.

I'm no fan of big government, or anyone telling me I "have to" anything. I think our taxation system is a monster. Congress is supposed to lead, not bludgeon us into submission to their will. This is allegedly a government of "We The People."

But what if, just once, Congress said "Enough" and instead of using the roughly $1 trillion a year it gets from federal excise taxes on oil to continue down the same path to eventual destruction, they created a "Manhattan Project" scaled program to make renewable, non-combustion energy sources not only viable, but cheap? (For those of you not hip to WWII history, the Manhattan Project was the codename for the project that led to taking Einstein's theory of relativity, mere numbers on a page, and turning it into the atomic bomb.)

Imagine what we could accomplish if we had the political will to say "I have a problem" then act to change.