Reply #2: It is interesting to consider how history will treat our Mid-East excursions. [View All]

[leftrightwingnut]

Is it a naive attempt to keep oil prices low? Or is it simply the first of a series of major preemptive military actions whose aim is to secure a dwindling resource? I doubt that the U.S. and China will confront one another directly; however, we are locked in the beginnings of a brutal war to keep the supply of cheap but nonrenewable energy feeding the relentless growth on which modern economics is based.

The first feeders in that chain are, of course, the "energy" companies.

Fortunately, the payoff is somewhat indirect and intangible. The immediate result is higher energy costs and a starving economy. By taking action, we have forced ourselves into the very economic situation that we wished to avoid. When petroleum is finally depleted beyond any reasonable utility, perhaps we will have gained more of it by choosing this path, but how will we know?

History will lament the riches wasted in this effort. How much suffering, economically and physically, could have been avoided by investing those trillions in alternative energy research? Driven by short term greed and complete blindness to any long term vision, we are missing what could be a one-time opportunity in human history.

Are we headed toward long-term decline to our "primitive" beginnings? Or can we figure out how to harness the bounty of energy that radiates us every day with more energy than the world uses in a year?