what my friend wrote me --- go at it

[jay-3d]

Abundant energy is the single most important factor in our quality of life. All through the south energy keeps our air conditioners running; all through north, it keeps our furnaces burning. Our food grows because of ample fertilizer – which requires energy to make – and is harvested with fuel in the combines and tractors. The trucks and trains that get the food to us before it rots all require fuel to run. We get to our jobs, whether by train or by car, because of readily available energy. We can regularly see our families whether they are across town or across the country because of the readily available energy in gasoline and jet fuel. The advanced equipment in our hospitals all require ample energy, and the ability to get to those hospitals quickly requires energy for the ambulances and the helicopters. The computers we use to communicate, the televisions we watch, the radios we listen to, the military that protects us abroad and the police that protect us at home all require energy. Without abundant energy we would not have the lives we have today. Imagine for a moment we didn’t have access to that abundant energy. Our very society would crumble… our lives would be shortened, in many cases ending in famine and disease. This energy comes in many forms: nuclear energy, coal energy, natural gas, and oil. They are all important. Yes, solar, wind, and other “renewable” sources also help, but currently they are but a small amount of our energy. If this were easy to change it would be so. The fact is, for many things, there is no alternative that is as cost effective and abundant. How, for instance, can an airplane jet engine run without fuel? Maybe someday there will be an alternative, but this is many years down the road. It will take many years and trillions of dollars to replace the entire petroleum based transportation infrastructure. When we talk about freedom, we usually think of speech or religion, but on a daily basis, our most essential freedom is the ability to move around – to drive to the store, to see our friends and family, to go to the job of our choosing and still live in a home of our choosing.

Why am writing this? As Americans we have an unbelievably important choice to make this November. For as long as the Democrats even pay lip service to the very groups that would limit our supplies of energy they do not deserve our vote. As long as they listen to the groups that would not justify a foreign war to secure the most important region in the world in terms of oil, they do not deserve our vote. Simply put, it is too dangerous to put our individual lives and the future of our very society in the hands of those who don’t understand the importance of abundant energy. There are many people who will vote for the Democrats for good reasons – many of us can reach opposite opinions on many of the issues debated in America today. All but a very small and dangerous minority, however, should realize that we must overlook these differences until the Democrats can walk away from these dangerous fringe elements. For the sake of our very quality of life we cannot take a chance with John Kerry and his ultra-liberal environmentalist friends.