To The Editor:
Stan Gershbein’s column, regarding off shore oil drilling shows his irresponsible ignorance of the issue of climate change and global warming (“It’s Only My Opinion,” 7-11 issue).
You really need to publish these facts to counter-balance his pro-Republican ignorance. It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.
I am not the only American, who finds it strange that our low-rated Bush administration so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they’re going to bring gasoline prices down. It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it.
However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. Aside from the fact that scientists in India have actually developed a town car that runs on compressed air at a cost of a penny per gallon compared to gasoline. (Yes. It is absolutely true! It has been all over the news.) Don’t allow the greedy oil and nuclear barons to fool you. They have only their profits in mind, not your pocketbook or the health of the planet. McCain is backed by them, as was the Bush/ Cheney administration. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources, like solar and wind, that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon of gasoline. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year.
Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. This also means more good jobs to re-power our economy: When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs.
When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home. With all the political posturing on high gas prices and drilling, it’s amazing to hear someone being so honest as Al Gore on the issues of climate change and global warming and how counterproductive drilling for more oil is to saving the planet or lowering gas prices. People are ignorant of these simple facts. Especially your short sighted columnist. . Al Gore explained in his recent speech that it is possible to get all of our needed energy from such renewable resources in the course of 10 years, and it actually could be done. As he put it, “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet.”
Every bit of that’s got to change. But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.( High gas prices can disappear and make the earth capable of sustaining life, too.) The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. Can we really get all our electricity from sources like solar and wind in 10 short years? Yes, yes, yes we can! This is a matter of the life and death of our children’s planet home.
Professor D. Gioseffi (Ret.)
St. Francis College and Brooklyn College
Brooklyn Heights
Stanley Gershbein responds:
Dear Professor,
Congratulations. You have regurgitated the Democratic talking points exactly as they wanted you to. Everyone, including me, has always agreed with those that want to see alternative energy in the works.
During the ‘70s, we applauded with approval when most of us first heard about solar, wind, hydrogen, nuclear energies and everything else the left wanted to throw down the pipeline, but most of those thoughts were still left way back three and four decades ago. In the meantime, until we develop a new effective, inexpensive energy source, we will still depend on the same fossil fuels we depended on then.
The Democrat talking points tell us that drilling offshore and in ANWAR will not produce a drop for 10 years. We heard that in the early ‘70s. Since then there has been a great deal of vastly improved modern technology, and some who oppose the 30-year-old arguments from the left tell us that we will see oil in five years and perhaps sooner. In any case merely talking about drilling by some in the upper echelon of the United States has reduced the price of crude a bit.
Minutes after President Bush announced the lifting of the presidential ban on offshore drilling, the traders of commodity futures, people who play a large part in determining gas prices, lowered the price of a barrel of crude. Not 48 hours later, we learned about motorists driving less and the American conservation of fuel. That lowered the price again.
Both of the above are factored in the canons of supply and demand. I’m certain you know about that. Larger demand plus lower supply equals higher prices. Lower demand plus higher supply drive prices down. Any and all attempts at offshore drilling will provide for more fuel and lower prices. These are not Republican talking points. They are merely common sense.
In anticipation of another Democrat talking point, I must add that the prices produced by supply and demand are not – I repeat, not – inversely or linear proportional. When supplies of any product in demand are low those in need pay any amount and that demand drives prices haywire. We both can site several examples.
We must also agree that there is no single answer for achieving energy independence, but there is no doubt that increasing domestic production of oil is part of the solution. A recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the paper of record of the economy, tells us that there are up to 86 Billion – that’s Billion with a capitol B – barrels of oil on the continental shelf. That’s enough to supply the United States for hmmmm, about eight years. Now who should I agree with? The editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal with unlimited resources for information, or you, a highly educated college professor whose specialty is poetry? Again, I try to use a little common sense.
I have a lot more to say but space restraints keep me from going further. We can leave the discussion on global warming for another time. Please look for my remarks on that subject in a future column and I will look forward to another commentary from you.
Just one more point – on a personal note – was it really necessary for you to use language like “irresponsible ignorance” and “pro-Republican ignorance?” There is absolutely no reason for you to jump into the gutter. You obviously used that kind of language to intimidate your students, but it really doesn’t belong here in a family newspaper discussion of give and take. All it does is reduce your observations to a bar-room argument and, as such, diminishes your credibility. You don’t really know which side is correct and if the tree huggers and caribou coddlers don’t tie the situation up in courts in unending legal battles, we will both know in five years – or ten.
President Reagan said, on many occasions, that you can disagree without being disagreeable. I suggest that you cool down, take a Valium, and stop being so angry and disagreeable.
If you want to talk wind energy try writing to Ted Kennedy – a Democrat, who opposed the building of windmills in Nantucket.
