A Little Fuelishness

Let’s see – it’s been almost two weeks since Earth Day and I haven’t heard of any private jets of politicians, corporations, Hollywood-types or rock bands being sent to the chopping block.

It seems that the two most obscene words in the English language these days are “fossil fuel”, so for our energy needs, that knocks out petroleum, coal, methane and natural gas. Let’s explore what’s left:

Ethanol – everything that grows on this planet or roams across it (with the exception of California real estate) is carbon based. Where do the Greenies think the fossil fuels came from? So – ethanol is out.

Hydro-electric – this is clean, but it ruins the rivers downstream from the dams, destroys spawning grounds for fish and floods huge areas of arable lands.

Nuclear – on a par with fossil fuel in the obscenity ratings. Clean, cheap energy but basically a fairly inefficient way of boiling water to push turbines. Main problem – the wasted fuel rods. We need to do with them what we did with the Voyager spacecrafts – load them in a rocket, point it at empty space and let it go past Pluto.

Wind power – this is feasible only in certain areas where the winds are consistent, and even then the windmills are useless unless you have square miles of them. Plus, the blades kill migrating birds, and you'd better not put them where Teddy Kennedy can see them.

Solar – as with wind power, you’d need acres upon acres of photoelectric cells just to power a small city; and that’s assuming their bases are computerized to be at the proper angle all day to follow the sun. Assuming there is any sun that week. Besides which, current photoelectric cells aren’t efficient enough to make solar power viable.

Wave power – this was tried some time ago – using the power of the tides to generate power – but it hasn’t seemed to have gone anywhere.

So – what do we have left? No draft animals – they fart methane and crap everywhere – so you’d better break out those Hush Puppies or put sidecars on your bicycles for Granny and the little ones.