Drill baby drill

This is but one of many reasons I was disappointed when Obama decided to push ahead with more offshore drilling.

Maybe I'm brainwashed by Thomas Friedman, but there has got to be a solution out there to this fossil fuel problem.

Call me a tree hugger or what, but there's got to be a cleaner and healthier way to fuel our planet - or we aren't going to have much to leave behind to our kids.

China and India are adding billions of people who want to live just like Americans - consume, consume, consume.

God's green earth - I fear - was not designed for that many Americans consuming the planet to ruin.

Now, call me crazy but you're telling me we can't get all the energy we'd ever need from this big fella???



Friedman makes a good point - we don't have a 'green revolution' going on in this country. We have a 'green party.' Friedman points out - how many revolutions do you know where no one gets hurt?

There is a serious problem - if not concerning the environment (if global warming is just part of a natural warming cycle), then concerning our economy - that we can't just drill our way out of.

He advocates a turning 'green' as in energy technology into the new red, white, and blue. If we solve the climate crisis and fossil fuel crisis with our scientists and engineers, then we can own the next century. We can sell all of the cost effective and fuel efficient machinery to China and India and remain the world economic leader.

But before that can happen, someone has to get hurt. It certainly has to be the huge oil companies. It will have to be the buyers (how happy I'd be to fill up for ten dollars a gallon knowing that price - for however many years it would take - would cause the government to get serious about finding real efficient technology and fuels).

And don't think it can happen. If America can pride itself on anything, it can be proud of its ingenuity and inventiveness. As Friedman states, if the market was set to favor venture capitalists to invest is various types of future fuels, then you'd get 5,000 new ideas. That would result in a 1,000 serious contenders. Those contenders might lead to four or five revolutionary green energy sources.

Friedman states that he meets people wherever he goes who say, "I've been working on this idea in my basement or garage . . ." and they show him their inventions. If they had some serious venture capitalists investing funds in them, who knows what we'd get?

And don't doubt this. After all, didn't jobs build Apple computers in his garage? Didn't Gates do the same? Didn't Stordahl sell parts out of his car? Yet, look at the multi-billion dollar companies that have helped change our every day lives.

And don't doubt that the world can change quickly. Here's an example. Twelve years ago when I started teaching at Lincoln, there was one phone for students to use. And I always had kids going to the bathroom or their lockers and routinely swinging down by the old gym to use the phone. Other than that, the offices were the only places to have phones.

Then a few years later, each room got a phone.

And for the past six years or so, those are obsolete because nearly every single student and nearly every single teacher has a cell phone.

I went from cracking down on kids passing notes to cracking down on kids and their cell phones.

And it isn't just talking on the cell phones. They hardly even do that. It's all texting. Or surfing the net or taking pictures. Just look at how 'smart phones' have revolutionized the cell phone industry in the past five years.

But there is a huge demand for this and look at how the companies have worked to meet that demand.

The green or smart fuel industry could - and would - work the same way. If the market was shaped by the government and some people were to get hurt. But we would be leaving our kids a better world. No doubt about that.