June 5, 2009

The Dextrous Alternative

By Tim Haering

Carbon be damned! If cutting our atmospheric carbon enthrones China, to hell with it! I'll choke on the smoke, better tighten up my spoke, to keep China from pulling ahead of us.

Alternative fuels are nice, I suppose. It's great if our cars go farther on less gas. It rules if our power plants use less coal. But if all the cheap coal and oil we refuse goes to grow our competitor, while we bankrupt ourselves mandating more expensive alternatives -- well, forget it!

We Shall Not cede our economic preeminence for marginally cleaner air.

We Shall Not endanger our unprecedented freedom for Crosby, Stills and Nash's mythical return to The Garden.

We Shall Not trim our might to do what tree-huggers say is right

Global warming my butt! We can't even stop a twister in Tulsa, how can we hope to slow something as inexorable as GLOBAL warming? Lounging in your Natuzzi in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, sipping your barrel-fermented chardonnay, you Sierra Clubbers cannot fathom how BIG global is!

Not that I even buy your fairy tale. In the 4.5 billion year history of our planet, do we even have 200 years of reliable global climate data? Even if we had a thousand years of data - divide 1,000 by 4.5 billion and try to predict next year. You've got 4.5 million to 1 odds of being right. I bought a lottery ticket and put it in my IRA. I am surely set for retirement.

Don't be a fool! And stop calling me Shirley!

Maybe less atmospheric carbon dioxide is better, but I suggest we fauna ask the flora what they think. They seem to love the stuff, and everyone crying over the tropical rainforests ought to think about how all those trees would feel about less CO2. But no matter what, we can't do it at the risk of turning the planet over to China. As much as I admire their economic austerity -- they know how to save -- it is government-enforced austerity. Just as our government abetted the debt-based hyper-consumption that brought us to this fiscal brink.

If we are going to pursue alternative energy, we must do it in the context of developing a post-petroleum military. It could take the entire century to get it right, but we must be first to that finish line. We must be first with a military that doesn't need oil. And while we get there, we must burn as much oil as we can, to keep it away from the opposition.

So while Commissar Obama turns GM into Green Machine, push him hard to develop the first green tank battalion. Jobs for Oshkosh Corp.! And buy those porcine SUVs they build in Janesville and drive them from Superior to Beloit on Murphy Oil gas, while flipping a fongu salute to China. Put it all together.

And we must harness the sun -- our only infinite power source. Sure, the sun's theoretical end will come -- but we won't be here to prove it. It's perfect. UV rays are so immensely abundant and useful raw. We don't have to mine, refine or gasify, just soak it up and store it. If a tree can run on it, we must model our factories on trees -- be they greedy oaks that swallow all the light or jealous maples unhappy in their shade.

"Exit the warrior,
Today's Tom Sawyer,
He gets high on you,
And the energy you trade,
He gets right on to the friction of the day."

Perhaps we must rush to solar. Though it is one of the least efficient alternatives now, we must commit to what God has given eternally. Commit! Like Boone Picken's disciplined choice of natural gas for interstate trucks? Like Warren Buffet's "hell-for-leather" fix on Smart Grid? You cannot stride to tomorrow in 6 directions at once.

But our commitment to alternative energy must be military minded and must feature a deliberate course of using up our competitor's power.

We must ensure that America is not a bold experiment in Liberty but a paradigm for Civilization.