Is The Federal Government Going A Little Too Far?

When good intentions go awry…

So Drill Already!!

With gasoline prices over $4.00 per gallon and the price of oil in the news every day people are finally starting to realize where it comes from–drilling a hole in the ground.

For years, the only segment of the public that was ever vocal about oil drilling one way or the other were environmentalists or those who had been affected by a catastrophic oil spill. But now we’re finally starting to hear from everybody else. And guess what? Lots of people actually support more oil drilling. Poll after poll after poll after poll show that folks are beginning to favor drilling in areas where it has been forbidden before.

The worst oil spills that opponents of drilling bring up all occurred decades ago.  Drilling technology has improved tremendously and the statistics on oil spills caused by drilling bear this out.  Most bad oil spills occur in the transport of oil in tanker ships.  And I think we can all agree that there will continue to be transport of oil for decades to come, no matter where it extracted from the ground.

It’s time for Congress and the oil companies to reach some sort of common ground before we’re all paying $20.00 for a gallon of unleaded.

Green Guilt

It’s really pretty amazing what has happened to this country in the past several years as a result of the media’s focus on environmental issues.  Ten years ago, relatively few people related the word “green” to environmentalism.  Environmentalists were nuts who chained themselves to old-growth trees to prevent them from being cut down.  

Then Al Gore lost the election.  

Poor Al needed to do something he felt would garner him a place in history.  And, he needed to make America feel guilty about robbing him of his turn in the Oval Office.  So he bought a copy of the Cliff Notes for the Global Warming Theory, an overhead projector and an army of film editors and created An Inconvenient Truth (his title, not mine). 

The press, feeling guilty that they couldn’t swing the election his way no matter how long they kept it in the headlines, ate it up.  They followed Al where ever he went and reprinted press releases containing any wacky prediction of global climate catastrophe.  Suddenly, environmentalism or “going green” was hot!  Advertisers and marketing gurus jumped on the bandwagon and started telling us how much greener their product was than the other guy’s.

And, typical to how advertising and mass media works, the average American is made to feel inadequate if they’re not “living green”, “buying green” and otherwise doing everything the media tells them to.  Discovery has even started broadcasting a “green” television channel Planet Green TV which includes such programs as a reality show that follows Ed Begley, Jr. around as he tries to live a green lifestyle.  Here’s a description from Planet Green’s own website describing one scintillating episode: “As one might expect, Ed goes nuts over the solar power at Jackson Browne’s home…”  

Now we’ve arrived at the “Green Guilt” stage, where people begin making irrational behavioral choices simply to assuage the guilt they feel over how we’ve destroyed our planet.  The only problem is that most of the behavioral changes that people make don’t help the planet at all, but simply line the pockets of those who have decided to capitalize on the trend.  And, sadly we’re raising an entire generation of kids who are being taught this as a way of life.  They have their own green guilt if Mom buys them a Happy Meal at McDonald’s because they read somewhere that McDonald’s is killing the planet.

Congratulations Al.  You’ve started something you might be remembered for here, and at the same time made us feel guilty–not about how the election turned out for you, but guilty nonetheless.