MonoBlog


Sometimes topical, sometimes personal - always absorbing - Leo writes and presents his popular monologues whenever the mood hits him, and this blog is the complete collection of them.  Just like any other blog, you can subscribe to the monologues for delivery to either your reader Subscribe to The New Capital Show MonoBlog
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I Love Fossil Fuel

Regular listeners of this show may have the impression that I don’t like fossil fuels.  That I have it out to ban them, or price them out of reach.  Well let me tell you, if I’ve given you that impression, then I am truly sorry.
 
With a ranch 90 miles west of Houston, I need fossil fuels to quickly get me there and back.  This past weekend, James, a local guy in the land clearing business, came out with his John Deere bulldozer and forestry mower attachment.  Forestry mowers are all the rage in the land clearing business.  In the old days, if you wanted to clear land you bulldozed, scraping all the trees, brush, and dirt into a big pile, dousing it with diesel, and burning it.  While this definitely clears the land, it also tears up root systems, removes organic matter, puts carbon into the air, and can lead to erosion.  To be sure, there’s still plenty of dozing going on, certainly more than mowing. But a forestry mower chews up brush and unwanted trees, and grinds them down into mulch, which remains on the ground.  No burning is necessary, no roots are torn out, and your land is now coated with organic matter that will rot and turn into good soil.  Forestry mowing is the environmental way to clear land.  But the one thing that forest mowing and forest dozing have inescapably in common is that they both require a vehicle fueled with fossil fuel.  And with that fossil fuel, James cleared 6 acres in a morning that would have taken me a decade to do with my chain saw.  Oh, I like fossil fuels alright.
 
Saturday night, after the clearing was over, it turned cold here in Texas, reaching below freezing.  And while I had a good fire going in the wood stove, my aching body cried out for a hot bath in a warm bathroom.  I pressed the pilot button and starter on the propane wall heater in the bathroom, left for a bit, and then returned to the delightful feel of warmth.  I turned on the bath and watched as instant hot water, courtesy of the propane-fueled hot water on demand heater, poured into the tub.  With the temperature outside frosty, there I stood in my birthday suit, sore from the day’s work, and slid into the water.  As the water enveloped me I had only one thought: all of those people responsible for getting, refining, transporting, and delivering propane to my country house – I love you, and my aching, aging body, loves you too.
 
Oh, I love fossil fuels alright.  I love them so much that I don’t want them to disappear in the current mindless orgy of thoughtless consumption.  When I’m at my ranch, where the lights and electricity are powered by the sun and the wind, and the wood stove is going keeping us warm on a cold night, I value the quick and wonderful benefits that strategic use of fossil fuels provide for my life there.  Far from believing them to be evil, at the ranch they are crucially integrated into a larger web of energy use.  Fossil fuel there is not taken for granted, but instead its distinctive nature – immediately usable, reliable as a store of energy, powerful and instantaneous in its combustion – is deeply appreciated.
 
I love fossil fuels so much that I hope future generations also get a chance to love them.  And the way that I think this can happen is for use of fossil fuels to become responsible.  First, fossil fuels should only be used in a way that does not upset nature’s balance, so that impacts to the air and the land are measured and minimized.  Second, fossil fuels should become the “fuel of last resort” – when other alternative methods are unavailable, or when conservation is not possible, or in the case of a hot bath after a hard day’s work, not desired.  With these two principles, we should be able to move forward into a future where our energy industry, rather than having an image as a heartless purveyor of convenient but dangerous products, is instead trying to escape us the way John, Paul, George, and Ringo fought off love struck teenage girls at the height of Beatlemania.
 
I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital Show.

Posted on Dec 20 by Registered CommenterLEO GOLD in | CommentsPost a Comment | EmailEmail | PrintPrint