The Nature Of Denial

Imagine you work out in the middle of no where under an alcoholic Sheriff. One day your called to the scene of a fatal injury accident. Its a horrible sight, the car burned after the accident, beer and wine bottles scattered every where. Your first thought "Drinking and driving did this!", but the Sheriff is quick to correct you. "See this piece of metal here in this other piece of metal? Seat belts! Every burned stiff I've ever seen got that way because of them. " "Its not because they where drinking and driving?" "No, thats just an ivory tower theory, every accident has a cause, and really its never alcohol." sure enough a few blocks down a deer crossing sign, you think "the driver probably got spooked by a deer and then wrapped the car around a pole, rather than getting thrown clear they burned to death because they had safety belts on".

Later that week the Sheriff drives a van load of deputies off the road into a tree. The lone survivor who was wearing a belt survived with minor injuries, "He was plastered, weaving all over the road, ran us right into a tree, the belt saved me, but everyone else was DOA".

This is the state of our energy policy, one of deep denial. In our delusional denial speak world, global warming and peak oil are just "theories", ones we act as though will be revoked on a moments notice. Speculation , failure to drill a minor Alaskan oil field, these all get the popular blame, and the headlines. Yet the fact that global oil production fell in 2007 gets only a minor mention. If you didn't dig for it, you'd never know that Mexico and the North Sea oil fields are in steep decline.

Denial of this sort ends suddenly when confronted with something your senses can't ignore. Today I walked to the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, smoke burning my eyes and nose, smoke as far as the eye could see, the sun a dull orange. Its been this way for days, the driest spring ever recorded. Like the alcoholic Sheriff government "Scientists" will tell us that its connection to global warming is only a theory. If we continue in denial we will continue on the fossil fuel binge until it brings utter disaster.

So here in the land of almost $5 gas, and blasted skies, we are told oil price is all due to speculators, and that any connection of the vast fires to global warming is only more speculation.

Meanwhile congress has cut the solar tax credits. BLM has decided to put a moratorium on land leases for solar plants while they "study" the environmental impact. Will they study the environmental impact of staying on fossil fuels?

Denial isn't restricted to Republican Senators, the the environmental movement itself is guilty as well. Environmentalism has become a culture of obstructionism and NIMBY lawyering, unable or unwilling to make pragmatic decisions, feel good "NO NEW POWER LINES" campaigns. Alternative energy will require putting in new power lines, it will require using hundreds of square miles of desert land, putting windmills up in site of scenic homes, yes there will be an environmental impact. But we must not let mindless obstructionism prevail. The environmental consequences of not acting are more dire than we can or are willing to imagine.

Instead of forest with power lines, we will have ash.
Instead of beach homes with a view of windmills there will be only ocean.
This amongst global war over the remaining energy supplies.