Certain profiteers and auto addicts advocate ocean drilling and nuclear energy as the “way to go.” To counteract their reasons to those who will be exploited by their success, allow me to point out two very basic facts. First, life survived for centuries on clean air, water and a relatively unpolluted environment. Only in more recent centuries has energy, other than human, horse, camel, etc., become a necessity.
The capability of using coal, oil, gas and nuclear were great achievements toward industrialization, transportation, temperature control in buildings, etc., but, fact two, these resources are finite in addition to being dangerous in their acquisition and use, thus becoming increasingly expensive.
Whether you believe scientific claims about global warming or ignore them like our current leader, this planet remains life’s only home, and to make it barren is doing the worst possible disservice to our descendants. If we persist in putting all our tax money into milking these finite resources to their end — particularly in waging war to take control of others’ fuels as in Iraq — we will not have the wherewithal to build the facilities to provide energy from sustainable sources like wind and solar, sources that make the country free of foreign domination and individual households free from utility price gouging.
Enriching the military suppliers (while cruelly depleting the human population) is the main benefit (?) of war, yet our nation has lost more victims to the automobile than to all our wars. Proving ourselves to be the most intelligent species will require that we preserve our heritage by ending war and devoting our financial resources to renewable energy for all, since we are unlikely to see cheap fuels ever again. In addition, this solution is the moral “way to go!”
Amanda Porter
Bradley Beach