Spring Is Here

Finally, Spring appears to have arrived.  Along with lawn mowing and renewed calls that global warming is going kill the planet in our lifetime.  I find it alarming that folks cannot simply, within their own universe of their lives, affect what they do to clean up or keep the planet clean.  To appreciate the smells of new life that is the Spring season.  The security that that once again, the sun is bringing us needed warmth and loosening of the chains of winter that bound us to the indoors.  Even though the meteorologists have reported that we just survived one if not the coldest March on record, the whining drone of the climate change alarmists have increased their shouts so as to mask the attempts at real debate by us, the skeptics.

The earth and all our resources are precious commodities.  To be sure, to be utilized within the confines of ethical stewardship.  But I have yet to hear from the Sierra Club or most global warming destruction advocates about their lifestyle changes or the importance that individually we should be investing in personal energy generation.  These groups, for the most part, simply want to rule the energy industries or destroy them altogether and have them nationalized as public, not private, government owned and operated entities.

But the American spirit is thriving.  Gas purchasing is declining.  Retail is beginning to suffer.  Tourism knows it is in trouble.  While on the whole, we are not buying more efficient transportation, the trend is there.  An increasing number of property owners are investing or at least seriously considering solar, wind, alternative fuels and energy generation to move them toward independence from the energy grid.  The American spirit to be innovative and ingenious will show itself proudly before all these crisis are resolved.  And they will only be resolved if we have the freedoms to innovate.

The ingenuity and innovations will be due to economics and a sincere concern for clean air, water and land.  Not forced by government mandate but through education and economics.  Frankly folks, I now believe that the main agenda of the most vocal proponents and politicians claiming global warming is man made is to put into a place a new tax system that will be very difficult to argue against or even prove or track an assesment basis.  It is the Carbon Tax and the Carbon Vouchers traded like commodities or stock shares.

As looney and paranoid as I may sound, the Carbon Tax can be levied on those who go completely solar or wind and disconnect from the grid.  Because without buying electricity or gas from a utility, what tax mechanism is going to replace the utility taxes we were paying?  If we do not have to purchase any energy from a vendor - public or private - then how do those citites and  states collect the taxes they were receiving from the sales of energy products?  And remember folks, any living thing, I am told or read, somehow has or leaves a carbon footprint.  Naturally.  So, we get taxed simply for breathing!  Shhh, (in a gently whispering voice) it's time to wake up America.!

This is a huge bill that has not gone unnoticed by the tax collectors, er, our elected representatives.  You see, when we win, they lose.  We won't need those taxes collected because we won't have to fund the rights of way and infrastructure necessary to support grid based energy resources.  We will be more secure since it will be really difficult for a terrorist to take down whole regions of electrical or gas distribution without using nuclear, EMF or neutron based WMDs.  Consumers will be able to amortize and budget energy costs and needs over 20 and 30 years or perhaps longer.  Thus housing will become more affordable.  The  food crisis now happening will be able to stabilize.

I ask you write your local, state and Congressional delegations to push to allow the consumer to be empowered to satisfy our own energy needs.  Only then will we again become appreciative of what it takes to power those TVs, air conditioners, furnaces, video games, computers and multi-thousand square foot homes.  And all that concern over greedy utility companies and the pollution of our land, sea and air will become a few pages in the history books.

So, enjoy the Spring.  Despite all the alarmists, Spring and warmth as returned and new life abounds!

Russ