Energy Matters

John D’Aloia Jr.

      John D’Aloia Jr. is a retired navy captain and a submarine commander. He is a columnist for several newspapers in Kansas.

      Energy is the lifeblood of our technological society. If you doubt it, look at what happens to everyday living the instant power goes out. (When power came back on in New York City, the trash haulers had to work overtime to get rid of the tons of spoiled food as people cleaned out their fridges.) If you think that our society can exist, much less advance, without the constant development of energy sources and the means to distribute the energy to where it is needed, you must have just awoken from a Rip Van Winkle sleep—either that or you consciously want to curse the darkness, freeze in a cave, and have a life-span measured in years, not decades.

      The political opponents of the President have charged that we overthrew Saddam Hussein to get our greedy hands on Middle East oil, particularly Saudi oil. That we are so dependent upon Middle East oil is our own bloody fault—and the fault of those who try to use the “blood for oil” mantra as a means of regaining political power. We have the energy supplies at our beck and call—but not the will to use them, kowtowing to the environmental Guardians and the energy Luddites.

      We have oil, we have natural gas, we have coal, we have uranium. Methane hydrates and coal-bed methane have potential. We have the knowledge to make safe use of all these energy sources. Switchgrass research indicates that its net energy output is 20 times better than corn. Scientists are developing viable lubricants from plants. In those situations where special conditions and needs come together, we can tap the wind, the sun, and the ocean.

      A bit of sunshine trivia. Some ecofascists have come up with another reason why we have to get rid of people. The sunshine used by humans is sunshine that critters and plants cannot use. We must get rid of humans so that plants and animals can multiply and diversify. I am not making this up. The hate of humanity, and by extension, a hate of God, is a characteristic of many ecofascists as demonstrated by their public pronouncements. “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”—Dave Foreman, Founder of Earth First!

      Do not get side-tracked on hydrogen—it is a means of storing and transporting energy, but not a source. To put hydrogen in a tank, some process using an energy source had to first liberate the hydrogen from whatever form it was locked up in. (Nuclear power, anyone?) If you want to use wind-power to do it, keep in mind that one estimate is that it would take a wind farm the size of New York State to produce the energy needed to produce enough hydrogen to provide for our transportation needs. As a submariner, I must say that I am not all that thrilled with the thought of messing with such a fuel—“Remember the Cochino.”*

      Trumping all the natural resources we have is the most valuable resource of all, human ingenuity. Loosening the human mind, we can have all the energy we need without raping Gaia, without violating our God-given stewardship responsibility. The late Julian Simon (professor of Business Administration, University of Maryland) was on the mark when he took aim at those who had no faith in the human race:

The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.

      All we have to do is figure out how to once and for all convince the public that the environmentalists and anti-technology cave dwellers have been blowing smoke for their own selfish goals. Their goal is power, their goal is the elimination of freedom, their goal is the elimination of God. Their deification of Gaia is nothing but a facade to hypnotize those who operate on emotion and not their God-given intellect. The “environmental” movement is a convenient vehicle for all of them to obtain their goals. When all these so-called environmentalists’ messages are directed at heads filled with mush, and principle-less politicians, the Constitution, freedom, and humanity come up the losers.

      If we could deafen their siren song, if we could elect representatives not in their thrall, we would be in a position to tell the Saudis to take their oil and see what good it does them when there is no market for it. How to bell that cat seems to be beyond us. With our political system increasingly driven by the power of special interest groups with money and headlines, with the intellectual drawbridges raised in the government school system, ’tis the proverbial uphill battle.

*   On August 26, 1949, the USS Cochino (SS345) was lost off Norway as a result of a series of hydrogen explosions. Seven people died, all during the rescue attempt in the gale-tossed seas: a civilian tech rep riding the Cochino and six crew members of the rescuing boat, USS Tusk (SS426). On February 21, 1955, the USS Pomodon (SS486) was charging batteries alongside in San Francisco Naval Shipyard. A hydrogen explosion in the forward battery killed five crewmen.     Ω