Some local people cry "Drill, Baby, Drill," reminding us of our nation's need to be freed from dependency on foreign oil. And we are regularly treated to TV ads praising "clean coal" in generating electricity.
Coal is never clean. Natural gas is seen as an alternative to coal and oil, as a bridge energy on the way to greener generation, or as a backup for intermittent wind or solar sources.
Rick Perry's "solution" for our economy: End all environmental air-quality regulations and drill offshore in the gulf, drill on federal lands in Alaska, and voila, we will have 1.2 million new jobs. In health care, perhaps?
The big picture is a picture puzzle. Some seem to think that they can just take a piece or two out, carve it into a different shape, then just fit it back in.
Dick Cheney had a similar thought _ fracking can give us access to the natural gas in shale, heretofore inaccessible. To promote that extraction, he and George W. Bush connived to make fracking exempt from the clean air and clean water acts. Wonder why?
There are consequences for every change, but some can only imagine windfall profits by avoiding the rules. The rules, however, are basically just the rules of nature. Since the 1800s, energy has kind of exempted us from these rules. Or so it seems.
We can be warm or cool as need be, apart from climate. We can swoop at will around the Earth on land, sea and air. We can move mountains, cut forests down, dam rivers and fish out the ocean. We can commit to a beef-intensive agriculture while ignoring whole populations starving at a subsistence level.
It might be useful to recall how the original Native Americans were living off the land. For them it was bountiful, for they had it all. But they had an ethic of taking no more than they needed from the Earth that sustained them.
We have lost both that ethic and almost any sense of being connected to nature. We just take what we need, when we need it. The consumers are not the takers. Energy providers capitalize on their access to natural resources for profit. Conservation costs them money.
When extraction is imprudent and without conservation regulations, the world has been ravaged and polluted without regard to the finite availability of resources. Regulation implies planning. Planning is different from the mad scramble of opportunistic exploitation, to "get mine now" in the market game of finders-keepers.
TV can show the strong-hearted what cage fighting is like, a primitive no-holds-barred, anything-goes contest something like gladiators fighting to the death. What governs them is nothing but their power, not refereeing.
That was the mentality of Mitt Romney's road to riches working for Bain Capital, a private equity company he co-founded. The pattern was to buy up functioning companies, bankrupt them with debt, then liquidate them, putting thousands upon thousands of workers on the street while reaping huge profits _ over and over.
The plundering class tends to plunder, and that is shortsighted activity, not at all exhibiting planning. Consider Perry's giving gas drillers in drought-ridden Texas all the water they want for fracking, millions upon millions of gallons of fresh water.
In a world reaching for civilization, we are still a long way short. As we all know, decisions always involve balancing competing interests and addressing the conflict. We need to increase our exports to bolster the jobs market. And we need to shepherd the energy resources upon which the American lifestyle is so dependent.
Now see that energy company Dominion Resources Inc. is seeking government authority to export 1 billion cubic feet of liquified natural gas per day (Daily Star, Oct. 10). We have such a big surplus that we can just sell off "excess" natural gas for short-term profit without consequence, or so money-hungry as to auction off this precious resource like a third-world potentate, who gains from his people's suffering.
I would say that this should not be about someone's profiting, but about our long-term situation as a nation in a world of increasing needs and looming shortages.
We need to manage our decisions, not by default to opportunism, but according to considered planning. Planning is a role proper for government, providing a form of "coaching" and "refereeing" among competing short-term special interests.
Rational planning can address community interests in the long term, providing sustainable management instead of exploitation.
William Masters can be reached at wmasters@thedailystar.com. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of The Daily Star and its editorial board.
William Masters
There's no such thing as completely clean energy
- William Masters
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Time for lawmakers who put needs of society first
Richard Lugar, after six terms as a Republican senator -- known for his middle of the road rationality and his foreign policy finesse -- has been ousted by a Tea Party extremist backed by outside right-wing funding.
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War not worth gambling with lives of soldiers
Are you not tired of our war in Afghanistan? It had a point, once, after 9/11. Bush couldn't distinguish his myopic personal agendas from the nation's needs and let Osama escape, dropping the ball entirely, causing many deaths.
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Titanic was a microcosm of U.S. economic disparity
Haunting reminders of the Titanic tragedy have wafted over us with the centenary of its sinking. The maiden voyage of an impressive, state of the art vessel, was a little like that of the Challenger space shuttle, at the cutting edge of developing technology. But the shuttle carried our pride in science and space exploration, not hundreds and hundreds of people.
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William Masters: Nation stands divided between 'us' and 'them'
In February, Trayvon Martin was shot dead as "suspicious" by a volunteer neighborhood watch man. The case has aroused community reaction in Sanford, Fla., and is still echoing across the country.
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A quarterback can't win the game alone
What is the relationship between democracy and wealth? Democracy is a political system, while wealth relates to economics. We have equal political rights, but we don't all have money. Extreme differences destroy the continuity of community solidarity.
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Playing Left Field: Some blur lines between laws of church and state
We have freedom of religion in this country. A clear separation between churches and governmental agencies is constitutionally mandated. Government power may not favor or advance a particular religion.
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Humans need to look at long-term impact on Earth
Global warming is real and we are smugly oblivious. I recall the USS Nautilus making a journey to the North Pole decades ago, and poking its conning tower dramatically up through the ice right at the pole itself, an arrival theretofore possible only by dog sled and arduous effort.
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Playing Left Field: Meaning of 'liberty' lost in GOP's translation
COLUMN BY WILLIAM MASTERS .... Now, during the Republican presidential primaries, we hear a lot about liberty. It is a leave-me-alone type of liberty, suggesting the license to do what one may choose in the sacred call of business activity. Much is sought in the name of freedom.
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Government no longer about power of people
In my time, the idea of conservatism has been turned upside down. Men in my family wore neckties even when just reading the paper at home.
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Americans should respect right to bear arms
Early one morning a while back, I answered a phone call from Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, warning that the sky is falling _ no worse: that the U.S. is participating in a U.N. treaty effort to deal with the irresponsible international transfers of small arms.
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Inequalities breed social dysfunction
In my most-recent column, I presented recent epidemiological evidence that the inequality built into a society underlies the sense many of us have that the country is going in the wrong direction.
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Inequalities breed discontent in our modern society
So many Americans feel a dispirited sense of complaint. The conservative ranks have gravitated to Tea Party anger, while more lately, a less-defined segment has turned out to "occupy" public areas for mutual support as the amorphous "99 percent" is filled with discontent about the elite 1 percent reaping the lion's share of wealth.
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Freedom should not belong to the rich alone
"I pledge allegiance to the flag ... " intones every first-grade kid, in unison and sincerity. When I was in the first grade, we faced the mortal crises of Pearl Harbor and fascism in Europe.
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There's no such thing as completely clean energy
Some local people cry "Drill, Baby, Drill," reminding us of our nation's need to be freed from dependency on foreign oil. And we are regularly treated to TV ads praising "clean coal" in generating electricity.
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Consider competence, congeniality when voting
NetSummary
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'People are scared, angry' that the country is going down the drain
There is a widespread discontent among most of us that the country is going down the drain. People are scared and angry. Too many people can find no work at all, and unemployment is not going down.
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'We are all dependent: Both upon the Earth, and on an economy'
If we don't change, change will bury us. That will be because of the changes we ourselves inflict so causally upon this one and only Earth.
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'Corporations are not people; they are tools that entrepreneurs use'
"Corporations are people, my friend," quipped Mitt Romney, in rebuttal to a crowd shouting that corporations should be a source of revenue instead of taxing people.
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Thoughts of a 'bleeding-heart' liberal
This is the beginning of a biweekly column, as The Daily Star strives to remain fair and balanced in relation to the opinions of the day.
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Time for lawmakers who put needs of society first
