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Oil production: Earth to Nancy Pelosi
Raymond S Kraft
Responding to the President's call on Congress to lift the bans on drilling for oil off both coasts, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded by calling Bush's move a "hoax," claiming, "It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence."
The reason given for this is that there was a big oil spill from a ruptured well-head off Santa Barbara in 1969 that killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of birds, and covered the shoreline with oily goo for miles. Her colleague, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) said the plan would expose fragile marine species and coastal businesses to the threat of a catastrophic oil spill.
They worry that another oil spill could hurt the California economy because tourists won't come to look at miles of beaches covered with dead birds and oily goo. This, as unemployment in her home state of California jumped from from 6.2 percent to 6.8 percent in the merry month of May, and the statewide average gas price hovered at $4.61 a gallon. Well, Nancy, the Great Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969 was 39 years ago. And there haven't been any more like it since. And that Santa Barbara spill didn't kill any people, and, within a couple of years, you could walk along the same shore and see nary a trace of it.
But I like Nancy's logic. If we're thinking about doing something, and something bad might happen if we do, then we mustn't do it. Yes ma'am. I think we should apply Nancy's logic across the board. Since that 1969 oil spill, some 1.3 million Americans have been killed in automobile, truck, bicycle and motorcycle accidents. That's 1.3 million more human deaths than were caused by the Santa Barbara Oil Spill.
Obviously, cars, trucks, bicycles and motorcycles keep killing tens of thousands of people, year after year, with no end to the carnage in sight. If we allow the proliferation of cars, trucks, bicycles and motorcycles to continue, thirty or forty thousand more Americans will keep dying every year. Therefore, we must ban cars, trucks, and motorcycles. Beside, the people who die in all those traffic accidents never come to Santa Barbara to look at the pristine beaches and pump up the tourist economy, ever again, so cars, trucks, bicycles and motorcycles have to go.
Airplanes. The Santa Barbara Oil Spill didn't kill anybody. But airplanes sure do. Every year, hundreds of people die in airplane crashes. And airplanes were used as weapons to bring down the World Trade Center on 9/11. If we keep building airplanes, something bad will happen, people will die. So we have to ban airplanes, too.
T. Boone Pickens wants to build hundreds of thousands of giant windmills to produce electricity, so we won't have to drill for oil in the sea. Wonderful! According to T. Boone, just 2,500 windmills can produce as much electricity as a coal or nuclear power plant. So, if we build 250,000 big windmills, we won't have to build those 100 pesky nuclear power plants John McCain envisions by century's end. But wait! Windmills kill birds, don't they? If each of those 250,000 windmills kills just one bird a month, they would kill three million birds every year, many times as many birds as died in the Santa Barbara Oil Spill. So, no, we can't build windmills. Like oil, they kill birds.
Food. Food kills. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans die of heart disease and diabetes. Heart disease and diabetes are caused, mostly, by eating too much food. The Santa Barbara Oil Spill didn't kill any people, but, because of food, people are dropping like flies all over, every day. If we eat food, something bad will certainly happen. And people who die from eating food will never come as tourists to Santa Barbara ever again, hurting the California economy. Therefore, we must ban food.
Doctors. A lot of sick people go to doctors. Hospitals, too. And pharmacies, for drugs. According to studies done by the Harvard School of Public Health, some 200,000 people a year die from medical malpractice, infections contracted in hospitals, and adverse interactions of prescription drugs. That's 200,000 more people than died in the Santa Barbara Oil Spill. A few weeks ago the FDA thought for a moment that people were getting salmonella from tomatoes, so we quickly banned tomatoes. One person died. Well, hundreds of thousands of people a year die because of doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies. Clearly, we have to ban them all.
Bathtubs. Hundreds of people die by slipping and falling and banging their heads on the edge of their bathtubs every year. Nobody died in the Santa Barbara Oil Spill, but far too many Americans die in Attacks of the Killer Bathtubs, so we must ban bathtubs.
Houses. Houses kill. People fall off roofs. Houses catch fire, and people burn to death inside. Houses encourage fighting. A lot of people have quarrels and fights in houses, sometimes people kill their husband or wife in a house. And houses use energy to heat them in the winter, and cool them in the summer, and that adds to Global Warming. If we don't have to heat and cool houses, we won't need so much energy, and we won't have to drill for oil in the ocean. If we keep building houses, bad things will happen, so we must ban houses.
Jobs. Hundreds of thousands of people are injured at work every year. Thousands are seriously injured, permanently disabled, and hundreds are killed. Many people have anxiety, stress, and depression because of their jobs. More people die on the job each year than in the Iraq war. Clearly, if we keep having jobs, bad things will happen. So we must ban jobs.
Now, children. Children are really dangerous. They run around screaming their heads off and run into things and get hurt. They leave toys lying all around where adults will trip over them and fall and get hurt. Then we have to go see a doctor, who may kill us. Millions of children grow up to be criminals. These former children rob, rape, and murder, lie, cheat and steal, clog our criminal justice system, sit indolently in prison at taxpayers' expense, some $40,000 per year picked out of our pockets to keep these dangerous former children locked up off the streets. If we have children, bad things will happen. Definitely, we must ban children.
Forest fires kill. Forest fires kill everything that can't run fast enough to stay ahead of the fire. In every big fire, milions of trees and millions of lovely, innocent wild animals are burned to death. And then the erosion clogs up streams and kills fish. Sometimes they kill people, too. Many times worse than the Santa Barbara Oil Spill. So, we must ban forest fires.
But wait! To do that, we'd have to log enough trees to create a lot of firebreaks, and that could mean "clear cutting," can't do that. It's unnatural. At least we'd have to log enough trees to reduce the fuel load so fires didn't burn big and fast and animals could flee. But chainsaws are unnatural, and if we let them loose in the forests something bad might happen. Unnaturalness. And we all know that Unnaturalness is a vast, evil, right ring conspiracy cooked up by Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove. Can't log 'em, so I guess we'll have to watch 'em go up in smoke.
Oh, dear. What is a Nancy to do?
Oh, yeah, almost forgot. Politicians. I fear, if we have politicians, bad things will happen. A lot of politicians are former children who, instead of seeking a life of crime, turn to a life of politics, where they can lie, cheat, and steal, and get paid for it! By us! They can indulge in fantastical flights of fancy, such as Nancy Pelosi's assertion that increasing our own energy production " . . . will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence."
This flies in the face of the first rule of Economics 101, which is that if supply grows faster than demand, the price falls; and if demand grows faster than supply, the price rises. All economists agree that if you want the price to come down, you must increase the supply. And if you don't want to buy it from somebody else, you have to make your own. Nancy Pelosi, of course, knows better. Earth, to Nancy?
There have been politicians in Congress every day for years and years and years, and bad things keep happening anyway. Wars. Budget deficits. Trade deficits. Debt crises. Housing slumps. Energy shortages. Gas prices. Floods. Tornadoes. Recessions. Hurricanes. Global warming. Climate change. Global cooling. An endless cacaphony of bloviation. Obviously, if we have politicians, bad things will happen.
Obviously, we have to ban politicians.
Raymond S. Kraft is Contributing Editor to
Family Security Matters and is also an attorney and writer in Northern California. He can be contacted at rskraft@vfr.net
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 28 July 2008