Newt tells it how it is: This crisis was caused by politicians. He tells how to reduce fuel costs in the short run, and the long run. “you want energy now” he tells us. And then he tells us how to get it.
How do we solve the energy crisis? Answer. Let businessmen extract oil. Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.
The twentieth century was the century of the red famines. Now, in the twenty first century, we are seeing the first greenie famine. Let us hope it will not be the first of many.
The red famines killed an extraordinary number of people during the twentieth century – famines caused in part by carelessness, in part by active malice as socialists sought to centralize all food under their direct control. To some extent the red famines were intended to end resistance by depopulating large areas, to some extent they were produced by incompetence, as politicians and bureaucrats directed farmers how they should farm, and some of which were caused by casual neglect, as those politicians and bureaucrats simply forgot to feed their captives.
We are seeing much the same with the first greenie famine. It should have been possible to figure out that converting enough food to feed near a billion people into fuel was likely to cause problems.
Of course, the failure of capitalism to smoothly convert from oil to coal is also a problem, but the conversion has not been made any easier by the fact that it typically takes ten years to get such a plant approved, if you can get it approved at all.
There is a green path and a brown path to dealing with the failure to pump enough oil. Environmentalists complain that coal to liquids conversion is on the brown path, and take for granted that the green path is inherently better and more virtuous, so much more virtuous that simply being in favor of it makes them more virtuous. They neglect, however, to explain that the green path involves a substantial and rapid population reduction.
“Brutally Honest” complains that Christianity is immoral, because it does not hate capitalism enough – no of course that is not what he complains. He complains Christianity is immoral, because it teaches that God gave us the world, and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, to take dominion over the world, to fill it and subdue it. He is worried that we are going to run out of oil, and there will be no oil left for our children.
But Christianity, at least the old fashioned kind, has faith in capitalism, and so long as we have capitalism, we shall have fuel for our cars
Old fashioned, unecumenical, not-in-the-slightest-bit-multicultural Christianity commands private property, and prohibits coveting, let alone stealing other people’s stuff. You are allowed to look at your neighbors house and think
“That is a nice house, I should build a house like that.”
But you are forbidden to look at your neighbors house and think
“That is a nice house, he must have some how cheated me and done me wrong to have a house like that, there is some conspiracy of people like him out to get me, he should be punished and I should have his house.”
The stone age did not end for lack of stones. Oil at present costs about a hundred dollars a barrel. Supply is restricted politically. Most oil companies have been nationalized, and are run by Sheiks or the like, who are incapable of getting the hot water connected to the hot water tap, let along maintaining and upgrading oil rigs. Most remaining oil is located in places where if you find oil, build an oil rig and a pipeline, your rig will be nationalized in violation of the agreement that the government signed when you went looking for oil. Paying off the thieves is, as he points out, not working, irrespective of how much oil remains in the ground, and indeed is funding terror.
But we can make oil substitutes from coal for a cost equivalent to thirty five to forty dollars a barrel - possibly a good deal less, if we were to convert our fuel systems to use methanol, and our fuel distribution system to distribute methanol by the tanker instead of by the drum. China is slowly converting to methanol, and expects to be about ten percent methanol in five years or so.
The main thing slowing the conversion is that businessmen fear that high oil prices are temporary, that the prices are the result of political obstacles to oil extraction which will be politically resolved, which would leave expensive investments in coal to liquid plants high and dry.
The major alternatives to oil based fuels are synfuel, which is good for jets and diesels, not so good for ordinary engines, methanol, which is good for ordinary petrol engines (with radically modified carburettors), but only gives you half the mileage, and dimethyl ether, a good substitute for LPG, good in diesels, no good in regular engines. We should be converting. If oil prices stay high, we eventually will be.