ENERGY POLITICS


ENERGY IS INSURANCE


Availability of cheap and abundant energy is an insurance for wide prosperity. Contrary is expensive and limited energy access an insurance for economic stagnation. As we already concluded: governmental income is growing or declining directly connected to the well-being of the economy. Governments are just like people: the spend more than they earn. An economic decline leads to severe lower governmental income. Thereby a severe economic decline equals per definition the recipe for a perfect storm: economy down, governmental income down, stimulus by tax cuts up, governmental spending up, banks down, bailouts up and by all this governmental funding and (super)national currencies under heavy pressure. Prosperity needs several conditions: water, energy, credit, legal and education are the most important needed conditions. Without those prosperity can't grow. If one of these comes under pressure prosperity will decline. In the 20th century fossil energy was the main prosperity driver. In the 21st century dependency on fossil energy will be the main prosperity suppressor. Fossil energy was just a phase in the energy life of mankind. Just like wood was before the fossils got dominance. If we want to secure our prosperity, we stop our dependency on fossil fuels as soon as possible, as otherwise this dependency will choke our economies. Fuel free energy generation (as in: renewable energy) is the best security delivering insurance for prosperity. We pay insurance for everything, we think people that doesn't are irresponsible, but with a change of our energy system as free insurance of our prosperity we have huge not rational problems. The problem is with in the word change. We all (conservatives and liberals) doesn't like change. Why? Change needs vision, plans, courage and actions. And we have a continuous shortage of those four. All of us. We pay a huge part of our incomes on third party covered insurance, some of us save also a substantial part of their income as do-it-ourselves future insurance for both ourselves and our children, but if we see that on of the foundations of our prosperity is defaulting more and more we don't do anything. Something that is quite unintelligible from rational perspective, as it not only will effect the future of our blood own children, but also our own. Life isn't pleasant in collapsed economies, with collapsed governments and collapsed currencies. That no way to spend the rest of your life. The answer is very simple: just get of an already creaked old energy system based on stuff that will have just only one price development: the only way is up for fossils (and if its the master driver of an economy the only this economy goes is down. We're such pink glassed wannabes. Thinking that wishing a car had brakes will stop a car. We need to hit the brake on fossils, and make speed on renewables. Not for the environment and certainly not for the climate. Just for prosperity. The whole environmental discussion has politicized the energy agenda. Environmentalists never had good PR consultants, they didn't know how to sell successful their agenda. The past message of the environmental movement was anti prosperity. They didn't know sustainable prosperity, because they didn't like prosperity at all. Still wondering why nobody wanted to listen, they have thought: the only option left is going in overdrive and they inflate their message to apocalyptic sizes. Green has a bad imago. Green is anti-pleasure, anti-life, anti-prosperity, just anti everything. The green case isn't round. The green case is also somewhat hypocrite. Green leaders don't practice what they preach. We need energy: don't complain if this costs somewhere somewhat nature or stop using it. We want to live and have houses: houses needs space: don't complain that that's not all right. E.F. Schumacher (one first thinkers on Sustainable Prosperity) was more a pro than an anti thinker. As an illustration of this pro orientated thinking he describes to opposition to a large housing development case in the sixties near London. His advice to both parties of the conflict: we have to build houses, so let's do it, farm land is just an old fashion type of biological mono culture, make the new development biological diversity and of course save the unique parts of nature within it. Green has become reactionary (against anything), green is no longer progressive. Green equals surrealistic emotional attachment to an unreal idealized past. Green has become almost anti-life. Green in the heart of it is just grey. Very grey. Borrowing and acidified people with zero communication impact or even opposite communication impact. The only reason people every change is because they feel the need for it in their prosperity perspective. Economics is the main change motivator. Nothing else. Just old cold hard economics. The year 2008 was our awakening. We understood all together that $ 147 per barrel oil was the end signal of the the fossil period in our energy system. The fossil way leads to a cliff. Keep on driving is it think the best way to make people, companies and governments awake. Just drive on. Just good old fashion ironic have more communicative impact than preaching nobody wants to hear. Preaching is trying to put something into another's mind. Ironic is just delivering the seed and walk away. People don't change by preaching, they even get resilient to the issue by it. Ironics and economics. That are the two main initiators of change, the main facilitators are vision, plans, courage and action. We can have a fuel free energy system, we can stop draining our wealth by energy imports, we can insure our prosperity. But we rather be blind, deaf and passive. We don't like further prosperity for ourselves too much so that we change directions. We don't care at all for the further prosperity of our children. We drive with 60 miles a hour to a wall and we smile to ourselves in the mirror and to our children in the backseat. We really believe that we have a fun ride into the future. We really do. Some stupid 'anyone else will change the direction when its needed' misconception has paralysed our brains while we ourselves are are holding the steering wheel. Do you want to spend the most of the time left in poverty? Just count of the near collapsing fossil energy system: it will give you this very interesting ride. Changing our energy system is insuring our prosperity. Energy is Insurance is a very valid statement.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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