Do you know why oil is so high?
I’ll tell you why. Because here in the United States we are not as smart as the French! What you say? I can hear my good friend Charlie Dent now, “Al, come on you’re the ugliest American I’ve ever known.” (Charlie by the way, is a well known Socialist who comments on these posts on a regular basis and runs a company called Precedent Marketing in Derry, NH).
But the French have learned that nuclear power is the way to independence from the Sheiks in Saudi Arabia. The French produce almost 76% of their electricity needs from nuclear power. Check out this article on pbs.org. In the good old US of A we produce about 20% of our power from nuclear energy.
So what is wrong with this picture? In my opinion it’s a lack of political will and courage. We talk about lessening our dependence on foreign oil yet we have imported more and more every year for the last 20 plus years. Every energy source has a risk–including nuclear–but because of the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) folks we have not put a new reactor on line in many years. So does that make the French smarter than us? I doubt it! But what I do think is their government had the political courage to do the smart thing and not worry about the Greenpeace folks of the world. For once I think we should look at the French (after all, they do have a conservative President now).
November 27th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I’d never call you “the ugliest American,” Al. But I don’t think nuclear power is the answer, more because of the waste issue than the possibility of an accident. I do, agree with you that our government needs courage, not to build nuclear power plants but to put on the full-court press for faster development of fuel cell technology for automobiles and solar for generating electricity.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Interestingly, the NIMBY’s and the Environmentalist freaks are anti-Nuclear for reasons you indicated, but the same ilk are anti-wind because of the possibility of windmills erected in Kennedy’s / Kerry’s play ground or on mountain ridgelines that may obstruct the view of those with “weekend homes.” The aforementioned are also apoplectic over cutting down trees for electricity production. (PSNH’s Schiller station burns almost a ton of wood per minute).
America SHOULD be on the forefront of Solar (Photovoltaic), wind and BIOMASS (converting wood and other carbon-neutral consumables into electricity). There is some interesting goings-on in northern NH that will provide carbon-neutral electricity to citizens while employing loggers and maintaining healthy and smart forestry in a state which is 84% forested. To say nothing of Merrimack-based GT Solar’s cutting edge PV production. Sadly, the vast majority of GT Solar’s business comes from Japan, China and Germany.
The ethanol thing is a joke as it takes fossil fuels to make it and is less efficient than the gasoline and diesel it replaces. American farmers are plowing over wildlife habitat to plant corn to sell to the oil companies. Great! Now the oil companies are gouging us at the pump AND causing food prices to rise as they corner the market on corn. What do cows, chickens and pork eat? CORN! AAARRRGGHHH!!!!!!