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Re: Solar Energy



<meron@cars3.uchicago.edu> wrote:

>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:

>>To me, this "competitive market" would be like my local supermarket, if I were
>>to pick up a bag of oranges, and pull out a gun, and say to the checkout
>>clerk, "I don't want to pay more than 10 cents each for these oranges."

>I gather that your point is that oil is so cheap since the oil 
>producing countries are paid so little for it.

   Not exactly... I'm saying that this is not a pure "competitive market."

   It seems to me that that oil is linked to "international problems."
   This fact is too often forgotten. Amory Lovins said (Atlantic Monthly,
   December, 1994) "We would not have invaded Iraq if they had only grown
   broccoli there" (referring to George Bush's dislike for broccoli.)
   Even before George Bush, five US presidents had publicly threatened 
   to go to war in the Middle East, if they "cut off our vital supply of oil,"
   which included raising the price. The Gulf War was about cheap oil. 

   By some accounts, we killed 100,000 human beings in Iraq in the Gulf war,
   directly. And another 500,000 people, mostly women and children, died
   after US troops left the area, as a result of starvation, homelessness,
   poor sanitary conditions and lack of medical care. The loss of 600,000
   human lives is not a trivial matter. These dead people would make a line
   568 miles (947 km) long, if you stretched them out end to end, counting
   an average person as 5' tall in this case, since Middle-Easterners are
   shorter than Americans, and most of the dead people were apparently
   women and children. 

   So I would conclude, "sometimes people want to sell us oil at a higher 
   price than we are willing to pay, so we kill them."

   I think it's important to point out that a lot of oil is being wasted
   heating houses in this country, and that such waste is avoidable,
   and that avoiding such waste contributes to world peace. 

>Never in history were people paid so much with such small investment
>of their own effort.

It's their oil, and they have a basic right to set their price.

Nick


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