Via Townhall: Victor David Hanson offers us some cause for economic optimism.
One of the caveats I have tried to emphasize in my posts here is that enhancements in productivity could change the game we are playing. This happened in the 1990s with the personal computer, the internet, and storage capacity. I can remember one of our finance people laughing as we in the IT department described our storage needs back around 1994. He mockingly said we needed a terabyte — when we were still scrambling for megabytes. Now we could fix that space requirement with a couple of thumbdrives.
I suggested a year or so ago that a breakthrough might come via thorium reactors or nuclear fusion or nanotechnology. Those possibilities are still out there, but good old natural gas, if the greenies will let us harvest it, may be the immediate solution. I do not buy into the whole greenhouse gas hypothesis, but even if it were true, natural gas is a very clean fuel, and we have a lot of it here in the U.S. We could easily be energy-independent. What would happen to the economy if we were to once again see $1.00 per gallon fuel at the pumps?
We will still struggle with the burden of government debt, as well as the corrupt connections between financial institutions and government. An energy-driven economic boom might give us a fighting chance to get government out of our lives, to reduce our foreign interventions, to scale back our military, and to reduce the number of government dependents and entitlements. I may have found a reason to vote for Romney.
I'm hopeful that we can buy some time with natural gas before the "next big thing" comes along. As you say, it might give us a fighting chance to overturn our downturn. What is so frustrating is the obstacles are political not technical. About two hours southwest of here is one of the world's best uranium deposits. Just sitting there, waiting for right political climate to be exploited. This isn't a Navajo reservation in the 1940s. It can be extracted in an enviromentally responsible manner.
ReplyDelete"Spread beneath 200 acres and reaching depths of more than 1,500 feet, the Coles Hill ore deposit is the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States and the seventh largest in the world. Containing approximately 119 million pounds of uranium oxide, the deposit is estimated to be worth more than $7 billion."
I had no idea. That would be a huge benefit. Build a few more nuclear plants.
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