Introduction
All right, everyone. Interesting article. About the US and how it must pursue energy dominance.
Energy Dominance Under Donald Trump
We had energy dominance for a few short glowing years under Donald Trump. Drill, baby, drill. Oh, we're a net exporter finally of oil and natural gas and the largest producer in the world. Also, investing in so-called renewables now. I've got mixed feelings on those, although the technology is getting better. So, you know, over time, I do believe that with a proper energy policy, we can get a lot of the electricity from solar. We're just doing it wrong.
My Plan for US Energy
Fracking and Oil Drilling
Frack all you want. Yeah, can it cause substance problems? Yes, it can, but, you know, gas is an important resource. Drill the oil. We now know that it's capable of refilling itself. I have my own theory with regards to oil production. I believe it's the result of the excretions of bacteria within the Earth's crust. It osmoses from areas of higher density to lower density into porous rock and so forth and forms bubbles basically. These can all gather over the course of thousands of years and become the deposits that we're extracting. We've seen, for example, in Texas that the oil fields they thought were barren, they thought they drained them completely. Well, they went back and did more exploratory drilling and found that they were pretty much refilled. It's almost like peak oil was a lie to begin with. There's an awful lot more carbon-rich resources in the crust of the Earth than people originally believed. This is going to be eventually, I believe, canonical within science. So no more problems.
Carbon Capture with Terra Preta
If you want to do carbon capture, you can always do terra preta. That would help too. That'd be part of the energy policy. You create charcoal and you charge it with nitrates, which can be gathered literally from suburban lawns if you want to. Pump the charcoal and put it on the fields and grow more crops, grow bigger crops. A little more CO2 in the atmosphere? God, we can grow twice as much food. People don't even understand. There's no limitation to our technological capacity as long as we increase our understanding.
Solar Energy Implementation
With solar, all you have to do is instead of cutting down a forest and putting up a bunch of solar panels, which doesn't really make a lot of sense from an ecological standpoint either, you put them on pre-existing structures that are already there. Yes indeed, the whole heat island thing. If you're absorbing 20-30% of the sun that's falling on that city, at least within the suburban regions, you can reduce the heat island effect. You're using it for other purposes. It's no longer heat at all. It's not heating anything up. The photons are going into the grid or whatever, going into the goddamn solar grid, and then people can have short-haul electric cars.
Improving Efficiency in the US System
The efficiency of the US system, in specific, is very, very low. It's a car culture. People drive like 20 miles to work and stuff like that. Deregulate the automotive industry to allow the existence of what the Dutch call bromfietsen and make them electric-powered for short-haul. Nobody's going to—why on Earth would you pay twice as much for a standard car if you have an electric-powered bromfiets, with a moped engine, but it still seats four in some cases and is much more efficient? It'd be a lot cheaper to operate. You can generate your own power on your home. Decentralize the grid, so to speak. That would be step number one.
Steps to Achieve Energy Dominance
Step One: Decentralize the Grid
Step number one is decentralizing the grid to allow individuals to generate their own power at home.
Step Two: Increase Drilling
Step number two is drill, baby, drill.
Step Three: Invest in Nuclear Power
Step number three, we need to invest more in nuclear power. A lot of people, the NIMBYs, will say, "Well, I support nuclear power, but I don't want a nuclear plant in my particular town." They've been poisoned to believe that modern nuclear generation stations are a huge risk. No, we've got dry storage and everything like that now. The risk of a meltdown in a modern nuclear plant, properly made, is very, very low. Just don't put them on the edge of the ocean with a tiny seawall around it like in Fukushima or build it improperly like at Chernobyl or Three Mile Island and you probably don't have any problem. We need more nuclear to power the grid. You can supplement that, of course, with solar and wind. That's a little bit different. And of course, we can also harness tidal energy.
Harnessing Tidal Energy
Yes, there are experiments currently ongoing to generate electricity by having big pylons that rise and fall with the tide and then that generates energy. The moon is giving this world a huge amount of energy every single day. As it transits around, it sloshes the waters of the ocean and other significant bodies of water significantly by several feet. You can harness that energy. There's no limitation to how many of these you can build. We should hook them up to desal plants as well, and you know, then you get pure water as well. It's a great thing.
Exploiting All Possible Energy Sources
I think we need to exploit every possible energy source. Yes, this even includes coal, by the way. I'm not a big fan of King Coal. The fact that you can put scrubbers in a coal-powered power plant or whatever doesn't necessarily reduce to zero the amount of emissions that you're creating. I'm not talking about CO2. I don't care about that. Plants will gobble it up and just grow faster. I'm talking about all of the other carcinogenic materials and stuff that are spewed out. We can reduce that by 99% fairly easily, but they're still there. Nobody wants to live next to the Union Carbide plant, for example, for a reason. Nor do they want to live in a community with several coal power plants. But we should still exploit it because we've got a ton of it and we've got countries willing to buy it. Yeah, China, they're building, like, what, a coal power plant every week or something like that? I think they build hundreds of them every goddamn year. They're insatiable with regards to coal power and we happen to have the world's largest amount of anthracite coal. Well, I mean, it kind of makes sense to exploit that resource, now, doesn't it?
Coal as a Non-Renewable Source
Now, of course, coal is not a renewable source of power. It's not the same as oil. It's not the same as, you know, if we get recyclable solar cells or something like that. We can recycle those materials fairly easily. Certainly, it's not as renewable as natural gas. There's plenty of that lying around, enough for the next thousand years probably. But we must pursue energy dominance. The United States economy right now is teetering on the brink. It makes no sense not to drill, baby, drill. Oil, gas, solar on homes and on buildings. You don't need to create solar fields that are funded by China. You can go ahead and invest in offshore wind turbines. They got hundreds of them in the Netherlands, for example. Their grid is insane. Half the homes have solar on them, don't really have heat islands anymore, and so much of the sun is being absorbed into the solar cells that the effect is diminutive in comparison certainly to a place like maybe Los Angeles or New York City.
Carbon Sequestration and Energy Policy
All of these things are possible. By the way, again, if you are worried about CO2, oh my God, if you have an SUV, you're contributing to climate change. Well, then sequester some carbon. Make charcoal, put it in your garden. That's literally all you have to do. I mean, that's what I'm doing right now. It's probably about 500 lbs of charcoal there. I don't know how much carbon dioxide that offsets, but it's a pretty significant amount. You get bigger plants and you're sequestering carbon. What the hell is the goddamn problem with that? We should have a national campaign to try to—there should be like a national system. Put solar on everyone's homes, attach it to the grid, let them exploit it for their own purposes, decentralized. Any overflow goes into the grid, it buffs the grid up. And teach people about terra preta. That's literally all we need to do. We can establish energy dominance very, very easily. If we weren't using so much gas and coal domestically, through a sane energy policy, we could export more of it. Well, that's good money, now, isn't it? US industry would flourish. It would be a great thing.
Current Administration's Approach
But that's the opposite of what the current administration is attempting to do. They're telling people, "Be going Jimmy Carter mode, put on a sweater, turn down that thermostat, and you're not allowed to have this particular faucet in your shower because it's too inefficient." Doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, now, does it? That's about all. Peace out.
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