Teaching the Baby to Swim by Throwing Him in the Pool

American energy comes from oil (40%), coal (23%), natural gas (23%), nuclear (8%), renewable--really hydroelectric with a percent or two of solar and wind-- (7%).

The Americans have just promised 2 billion dollars (as a loan, no equity) to Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil exploration company, to drill deep--really deep--off the coast of Brazil. There are 5 to 8 billion barrels of oil 4.48 miles down, in 7000 feet of water, 50 miles off the coast of Rio. Drilling at this depth has never been done before and likely will require new technology. This financial support is difficult to explain on two levels: One, there appears to be a general disapproval of the use of fossil fuels in this country (although they make up 85% of our energy) and, two, the government has banned American deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico so only foreigners do it.

As mysterious as the United States' decisions are, one thing is certain: There are no accidents in planning, only in execution. They want the Brazilians to drill for oil and do not want us to. Why? They have not given us the slightest clue. But it is no accident. Regulatory agencies are waging a virtual war against domestic energy exploration as America's reliance on foreign production grows in relative and absolute terms. In 2009 American oil production increased in absolute terms for the first time in 20 years. 20 years! That is no accident.

There hasn't been a new nuclear reactor built in this country for 23 years and it would take twenty years to build one. Nor is that an accident. The efficiency of nuclear power and our expertise at it will not be a factor here. They have not allowed us to build and the recent disaster in Japan will only solidify their position.

Somehow and for some reason the powers that be want us to shift to less efficient and more expensive fuels regardless of the negative impact. The fact that those fuels do not actually exist on any practical scale does not seem to matter.

There may be a new phenomenon afoot here. Many religions require a leap of faith in initial belief. Once the initial premise is accepted--that difficult step--then everything else is easy. These people seem to have a leap of faith in their vision of the endpoint. It is as if a religion believed in heaven and worked backwards. They finesse the difficult process part of the thesis, the creation of alternative energy sources. Each of the believers have a credo--global warming, CO2 production, unequal distribution of energy use, unfriendly oil producers, unreliable oil producers, etc., etc, etc. Some have saints. All want to use solar power, geothermal power, biofuels and wind power now despite the fact there are no ways to do that now. The process to that holy place does not exist.

Sometimes being a visionary is not enough.