More Dollars Makes Sense

Read this post on the Converting Green to Green weblog, entitled "What So Wrong With Making A Profit?"

Anytime someone calls for the penalization or summary attachment of a "windfall tax" for energy companies and they've immediately lost credibility with me.  But this site and its author have clearly demonstrated that logic and basic economic principles shouldn't be messed with in times of clear economic advantage for the oil companies.  Although I don't believe that we'll run out of oil any time soon or that we're going to heat up the planet and kill ourselves if we don't go completely green by 2016 (please refer to articles circa 1970 where the "scientific community" was touting the coming of a new ice age)...I do think that the economics and attitude in America are right for this shift now.  It took economics and global politics to make this shift become real, just as it always does...and there's nothing wrong with that.  Oil companies may use the big profits they're reaping now to morph their businesses over the long term.  How long do you think it will be before the top 5 oil companies own and influence biofuel production? (They probably already do yet this author is simply ignorant of it).   

What's really interesting to me is listening to typical broadcast media types interview oil company leaders on TV.  The show hosts speak as though global warming is an absolute and that we're on the brink of death at any moment.  (Did they drive their own Mercedes S Class in to the studio today or did they opt for the Lincoln town car limo?  Do their estates run on solar, wind, and geothermal?  Somehow, I think not)  The oil company execs have really figured this thing out.  They agree in absolute terms that global warming is happening and that "they're spending $X billion on making oil cleaner."  Perfect.  How can you argue against this?  We make fossil fuel use cleaner, transition to XX % biofuel usage, and let the economics sort things out.  If oil drops to $30 a barrel and ethanol remains at say $3.00 per gallon...will you still ring the bio bell?  Ed Begley will, and he's about the only one that walks the talk.  As Al Gore what his jet fuel bill has been over the last 12 months.  My guess is that it would pay for all of my readers children's college educations...or is Al running the bio jet made from recycled hemp fibers these days?

Comments

[Milt]

Hi everyone. Keep cool and you command everybody.
I am from France and too bad know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Over the cockney hard increases as scooter curses played less multiple with albums, the kind of model released."

With best wishes 8), Milt.