Every now and then, I’ll see something that might be blog-worthy, and just sit on it. Then, sometimes, I’ll see a couple more stories that add up enough to make a theme. Other times, I wait too long and Rick scoops me. (Jerk.)
This time, though, I think I got him beat.
Our energy situation crosses many boundaries. It’s economic, it’s political, it’s foreign policy, it’s national security, it’s a whole lot of things. One of the main concerns is that we get a lot of our energy from countries that… well, aren’t very nice places and occasionally don’t like us very much. This has the rather unpleasant consequence of putting us in a position of having to choose between principle and self-interest, usually finding some compromise that doesn’t really work out too well.
But lately, there have been some very, very interesting developments in the energy world that open up a whole bunch of interesting options. And no, I’m not talking about “the Obama administration has been giving big money to ‘green energy’ companies that made the appropriate donations to Democrats” racket — I’m talking about actual, real, practical things.
First up, Canada has decided to steal a riff from other industries — wood and diamonds come to mind. They’re touting their oil as “Ethical Oil,” pointing out that buying oil from them doesn’t come with all the moral quandaries that comes along with putting money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela, or a host of other vile governments that happen to be camped atop big oil reserves.
Next, remember the old phrase “petrodollars?” That was a shorthand reference to the economic power that oil gave nations rich in oil. Now there’s a new term being tossed around — “petroshekels.” This is a reference to Israel recently discovering that it holds rather significant reserves of natural gas and shale oil. As Ace’s guest blogger noted, the old joke — “if God loved the Jews so much, why did he give them the one part of the Middle East wthout oil?” just might be becoming inoperative.
Finally, right here at home, that same ol’ stuff — shale oil — is getting more and more practical. Right now, one of the most economically healthy states is North Dakota, which has a LOT of the stuff.
So, with these viable options, isn’t it time we stopped putting our money in the pockets of the “oil ticks” (a wonderfully useful term for the petroleum-based parasites like Saudi Arabia; a term I picked up from Laurence Simon and Charles Johnson, back when he was sane and relevant, among others) and started buying from Israel and Canada, as well as using our own?
