Resolving Energy Issues

Note: This is in response to a reply on an earlier blog. The blog scoffed at conservation of oil outside of abject necessity, while the response itself called for strict conservation of it.

-Charles Martin Cosgriff

Well, there isn't anything like good, open debate to stimulate the resolution of issues. Yet at the risk of repeating myself, I do not mean that we should burn resources wantonly or out of no consideration for the future. Rather, it is a belief in the future, a belief in the inventiveness and ingenuity of humankind, which lead me to scoff at conservation of oil outside of genuine and immediate need. Trying to hold on to what will indeed exhaust itself does little more than teach us that that is all we now or ever will have. Some faith in the future, some belief in the human mind itself, will show that oil cannot be all that we will ever have for fuel. Anything else is, quite frankly and admittedly for about the fourth time, simply pessimistic.

Further, while it may indeed be somewhat selfish to want to go about as I please, to work and ball games and family functions and indeed just to my favorite pub ten miles away, these things aren't wrong on their own merits either. What does it say about the need for human freedom when it cannot be aided by freedom of movement?

Our arguments are not in fact based on nothing. They are based on the thought that we have the means to alleviate our ills: our own minds and the application of the products of the mind. To be direct: I cannot answer you precisely on how the energy issue will in the long run be addressed. But I know that there are scientific and entrepreneurial minds who can address it. I am happy to leave them the job. IF, as another poster has as much as said here, folks get out of their way and let them do what they are able.

Human inventiveness is a wonderful thing. The future is only bleak if we think it so. What it really comes down to is trust: do we believe in ourselves and the talents God has given the many individuals we have now and who will later inherit the planet, or do we think everything will all fall down and we shall only perish? How we answer that question tells us everything we need to know about what we truly think of humankind.

I prefer to be optimistic. Pessimism condemns us the instant we accept it.