ENERGY CRISIS: SOLVED!

Author: Paul deVere

“Grub Street” is not in Beaufort County. It is not even in the U.S.A. According to Wikipedia, “Until the early 1800s, Grub Street was the name of a street in London’s impoverished Moorfields district. In the 1700s and 1800s, the street was famous for its concentration of mediocre, impoverished ‘hack writers,’ aspiring poets, and low-end publishers and booksellers, who existed on the margins of the journalistic and literary scene.”

The opinions expressed here in no way reflect reasonable discourse or rational thought.

It’s been right in front of us. All these years. All this time! Sort of like when Thor Meyer, a prehistoric ancestor to Oscar, was walking through a primaeval forest that had just been burnt to a crisp by a fire. Thor came upon a very crispy wild boar and there it was, right in front of him: bacon.

The answer to our energy crisis IS THAT OBVIOUS!

The answer is CHARCOAL! It’s renewable, sustainable (as long as the tree-huggers don’t get in the way), and it’s somewhat safer than spent fuel rods from a nuclear reactor.

Why doesn’t this make sense? Not only can you get it at (ugh) gas stations, you can get it at grocery stores, hardware stores, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe’s. You can even order it on line!

Charcoal you ask? Yes! Burnt wood (or whatever.) This is not new technology. This is proven technology! During gas shortages in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, even 60s, very forward thinking individuals ran their cars (buses, trucks, etc.) on CHARCOAL! No kidding. In 1931 in China, this engineer guy, Tang Zhongming, developed an internal combustion engine using charcoal. In Australia, in the 1930s and early 40s, there were eight different models. At the same time, Japan had nine to choose from (I believe, at that time, the military was using gas and oil for other purposes.) How do you think the occupied French got around in WWII? Charcoal-fueled buses and cars.

While there are a few drawbacks (heavy duty carbon monoxide and having to add new charcoal every 30 minutes or 30 miles, which ever comes first), so long OPEC!

As for home heating, how much does a charcoal grill cost? I saw one for $12.95 in our local grocery store! With proper ventilation (there’s that pesky carbon monoxide again), why, you could heat your house. At $12.95, every room in your home could (with proper ventilation) have it’s own heater! Think of the convenience. With a charcoal grill in every room you could pop a steak on the “barbie” in your bedroom and never have to leave on a particularly cold day. The benefits are, obviously, endless!

Home heating oil? No more of that Arab stuff. Kingsford all the way! Buy American! (Well, full disclosure, a bunch of Kingsford briquets come from Canada.)

And while we wait for charcoal to get into the energy pipe line, I’m all for on-shore drilling! Currently there are close to 7,500 oil leases out there in the lower 48. Then there is Anbar, excuse me, ANWAR. Look, polar bears are history. Caribou can’t vote. Anyway, it’s just Alaska for heaven’s sake. Drilling in ANWAR could possibly give us three entire years (36 months or 1095 plus days) of freedom from importing inferior OPEC oil to the U.S. That should give charcoal plenty of time to get into the alternative energy stream.

I was all for dropping that offshore drill bit in every offshore possibility we have (North Sea, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Gulf of Tonkin, etc.). Anything to keep those TOURISTS off our beaches. But then we learn that certain employees at the Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service (MMS), the folks in charge of offshore drilling permits, have been playing footsie with “executive assistants” supplied by such folks as Exxon and Chevron. The “media” claims these “executive assistants” are dead ringers for Pamela Anderson. Here’s where I draw the line! On my most recent trip to the MMS offices (I was trying to get a charcoal permit), I saw those “executive assistants” hanging out around the break room. When it comes to the environment, the “media” continues to get it wrong! The “executive assistants” looked more like Demi Moore and J-lo.

Then there are all those solar and wind power whiners. I’m sorry, I hate to pick on some grey-haired hippies, but let’s look at the facts. SOLAR, you say you’ll create 85,000 jobs in one year. WIND, you say you’ll double that amount! Plus you’ll pump something like hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars into our economy if the production tax credit thingy in Congress is approved.

Well, you alternative energy wack-os, my congressman told me that if the tax credit for your industry was approved, it would cost taxpayers millions in taxes. That makes total sense to me! Save, save, save! If we do not support wind, if we do not support solar, if we do not give tax credits to alternative energy initiatives, we will save millions of the tax payers’ money! And all it costs to save those millions is to continue to spend billions on imported oil. Do the math!