I'm in Martha's Vineyard and hanging out with my father-in-law. We can look out at the horizon where local people successfully blocked a windfarm. My father-in-law and I are both peeved about that. He said he's for Obama for a simple reason. Because Obama is intelligent and my father in law thinks he will grapple with the number-one issue darkening the future, energy. In his pie-chart of public concerns, my father-in-law assigns 40 percent to energy. 20 percent to the terror issue. 20-30 percent to health care. Don't start adding these things up, he warned me. I said that in 50 years we're going to have a higher quality of life and not be dependent on oil, and he gave me a look. I don't care about 50 years, I care about the next 10 to 15, and they don't look good at all. Oil production continues to go down, and the shocks to the civilized world (his words) are going to be extreme. A radical reduction in quality of life at $10 a gallon. Starvation, riots, etc.
He says the only responsible thing to do is to implement a program now of 30 different initiatives re energy to keep the gas price under $10 for as long as we can. This includes wind farming and natural gas cars and conservation measures like tire gauges (which could save what we're getting from offshore drilling right now) and government crackdown on the auto companies. He said he's going to write down his 30 things. It also includes drilling in Alaska. Anything, he says, to get us through the transition to the next technology as smoothly as we can.
The politicians are being irresponsible (he makes an exception for Obama), he can't believe that the newspapers aren't covering the declines in oil production more routinely, and the only good thing to be said for high gas prices is that they will cut solar warming.
He was grim and insistent. I asked him if his father-in-law had ever been so pessimistic about society's future. He said Never. I asked him if he had ever seen such stormclouds over civilization. He said Never in 80 years.
I'll provide the entire list of 30 things when he gets it to me.
