If Some Don't Give A Damn About Climate Change Then Try This...

Dear Zachary,

First, note that most of the statistics below came from the obstructionist, right-wing, Know-Nothing republican Senator Dick Lugar from the great state of Indiana. For a time in the 1920's and 1930's, Indiana made the Klu Klux Klan a household word in the good old USA.

It was there in 1924 that daunting republican and proud Klan member Edward L. Jackson was resoundingly elected Governor.

So the terrorist Klan was a lot like our modern Tea Baggers and Know-Nothings. They all gleefully sport alabaster white capuchos, flaunt racist banners, carry deadly weapons, and vainly call out for lynching any weaker rivals.*

Thank you for bringing up the very, very important subject of our nation's energy consumption hidden in all the hoop-la about climate change even if the row is fomented by Tea-Baggers and Know-Nothing republicans.

For a minute, let's forget climate change. We may not last long enough to freeze to death or some satanic alternative.

What needs to be looked at is our importing foreign nations oil. Clean Energy Fuels Corp. founder T. Boone Pickens** has stated it over and over again that we need to do something quickly about oil imports because the money that is running out of our nation is a disaster in the making.

By one study of 2006 the US consumes about 20.7 million barrels of oil a day.

Now it's a little less but still around 20 million barrels per day.

Do the arithmetic: 20,000,000 x US$80.05 (Kitco's Price / Crude Oil) = US$1,601,000,000.

Okay that's about US$1.6 Billion per day.

Now for the problem: We import about 13 million barrels per day of the above amount consumed. For one year that is 13,000,000 x 365 days per year = 4,745,000,000 barrels per year imported. That comes to US$379,837,250,000 or about US$380,000,000,000.

That's US$380 Billion per year.

According to one source, for 2006 we imported about 13% of our total oil from Saudi Arabia, and another 11% of our total oil from Venezuela. And don't forget that we are paying another 10% for yearly imports from Nigeria. That's US$38,000,000,000 or US$38 Billion to Nigeria.

That means we good old boys are paying about US$49,400,000,000 or about US$49.4 Billion to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia each and every year.

Just remember the money that financed old Osama Bin Laden and his gang came from there, plus the Hamas boys, Al-Qaeda in Yemen, and only Allah knows who else.

Thank you very much King Abdallah and subjects.

We are paying the nation of Venezuela US$41,800,000,000 each and every year.

So the old "Stalinist" Chavez is getting paid about US$41.8 Billion out of our poor capitalist pockets every year.

And surely we know that old Chavez uses the cash to foment more "Stalinist" revolution all over South America and the Caribbean.

And even worse, we literally paid for that Captain Christmas kid from Lagos, Nigeria to go and get re-educated and gussied up by the Al-Qaeda guys in Yemen.

So? Are we all sleeping? Is America sleeping, again?

The Know-Nothing republicans need to believe in Climate Change for no other reason than to cut back on paying gobs of our money to a faraway midiaeval King.

Or to a rag-tag bunch of SA Stalinists.

Or to Captain Christmas for his TNT tights.

So what now Tea Baggers and Know-Nothings? Did not the great American patriots of yore throw off the chains of servitude to a faraway evil King?

Old Tom Paine would certainly say that only fools choose not to defy the chains of oppression, correct?

Don't tread on me and all, right?

Right.

We need to get extreme about fuel consumption by cars and trucks or we will suffer in the near future.

And we need to do this now. We cannot continue to deny the reality of our world oil trade.

If we continue in our denial the children of our children will refer to our ignorance as the great horror of the 21st century.

Best regards,

Your Dad Martinshushu

PS: * Please see the Comment by Gerald Hoke following.

PSS: ** T. Boone Pickens is a good libertarian-type-republican. In the 2008 election cycle he granted republican candidates US$37,200 to help the conservative cause. And please note that in fairness, and to hedge his bets, and because he does a lot of business in those states, he did contribute about US$20,000 total to democratic candidates in Colorado and New Mexico.

PSSS: One last thought son, in the 1950's the WWII General and republican US president Dwight Eisenhower reminded us that "The heart of darkest America is in the Mid-West." Ike, of course, was talking about Indiana or thereabouts.