2001 Soap Box Archives

The Energy Crisis

When it’s evident to an uneducated guitar picker like me I simply cannot understand why it’s not absolutely screaming at the people with all the intelligence agencies and inside information at their fingertips that we are headed for a petroleum crisis that will make the one we had in the seventies look like a walk in the park. The demand for energy has vastly increased since those days and I’m still convinced that the seventies energy shortage was partially artificial manipulated by major oil companies to inflate the price of gasoline and other petroleum products. This time, although I still don’t trust major oil companies, I believe that unless something is done immediately, we are headed for big trouble. Trouble which could plunge us into a deep recession. Due mainly to the disastrous energy policy of the Clinton years and the gutless pandering of politicians to radical environmental groups there has not been a new oil refinery built in this country in many years, while the demand on the existing ones have increased dramatically. It’s time for somebody to stand up and tell the truth and here it is. Electricity does not just come out of the wall socket, it has to be manufactured by some energy source, be it oil, coal, nuclear hydroelectric or solar. Oil has to be drilled for, coal is dirty, solar costs too much, hydroelectric necessitates building dams and nuclear scares the heck out of everybody. so what do we do go back to lanterns, candles and buggies? I think not. Nobody but the good Amish people and a few crackpot tree huggers would like to see that happen. So where do we go from here? We face the truth like a nation of rational people. The fact is that if you’re going to eat fried chicken you’re going to get greasy. We have to allow the building of new oil refineries and drilling for oil. We have to explore safe methods of producing nuclear energy, and don’t say it can’t be done, we’ve never had a nuclear submarine melt down. We have to encourage the manufacturer of fuel cell technology and agriculturally produced fuels. If we’re going to pay two dollars a gallon for gasoline then let’s pay it to our hard working farmers rather than a few fat cats in the oil business and a bunch of arabs who hate us anyway. Before some of you militant type fur painters start sending out hate mail, let me say that I do support conservation. But if you truly believe that getting rid of SUV 's and building a bunch of windmills is going to solve the problem you could give Neville Chamberlain a lesson in naivety. It just ain’t gonna happen that way with an ever increasing population and a massive move to automation. I have it on the authority of nothing less than the infallible word of God, the Holy Bible, that there will be no lasting peace in Israel until the return of Jesus Christ. There will be only escalating turmoil in the Middle East and our supply of oil could go away over night, and thanks to Bill Clinton’s symbolic release of our strategic reserves we could be running on empty in a few weeks. We simply must do something about our dependance on foreign oil. And do something sensible and long term about our coming energy crisis.

What do you think?

God Bless America
Charlie Daniels