Fuel Wars
Mark Greathouse
(5/2022) Fossil fuels are today’s bedrock issue of "climate change." At present, we face what I call a "fuel war." Oh, and while I won’t speak here to nuclear energy, it’s a very viable alternative eschewed by both the slogan-wielding left and gelded right.
In the Old West, forage was king. Horses, oxen, and cattle had to be fed. After all, they were pretty much either transportation or sustenance. Grassy areas were the "service stations" of the Old West. If a traveler came upon a ranch or a town livery stable all the better. They could not only get feed for livestock but get repairs made not unlike today’s auto mechanic. Worried about climate change? You’d better believe it. Whoa! Not so fast. For them, climate was reactive, not predictive. They didn’t have high-falutin’ scientists or meteorologists to turn to. Cold wind and dark clouds could spell blizzard or hot broiling sun might bring a dry spell or even drought. Around 1884, barbed wire was invented, and ranchers and farmers could partition off the best grasslands and water sources. They couldn’t worry about what sort of climate next year brought much less next century. They had livestock to feed. "Advancing environmental justice" as
based in being "guided by the best science" was of no concern. Yes, they also burned wood, kerosene, animal fats and dung, and whatever else it took to keep warm in winter.
Oh, and the indigenous tribes across the Old West were fuel users, as seldom they camped more than 3 days in any one place. Their huge pony herds required fresh forage and their people required water, firewood, and game.
Today, nations play a dangerous game with fossil fuels. Make no mistake; it’s a war. Despots use fuel as leverage for their devious purposes. Self-serving politicians and their idealogue acolytes seek to use them as a means to retain their elected office. Artificially-high fuel prices can be used to blackmail users to limit use and turn them to alternatives acceptable to climate idealogues. It’s a technique similar to how in the 1870s many folks justified the slaughter of the buffalo as a way to drive indigenous tribes to reservations to become tillers of the land.
Fuel wars can get nasty. Back in the Old West at about the time barbed wire was being strung across open ranchlands, a Texan found with fence cutters could be charged with a felony. The conflict between folks needing to move cattle to market or find better forage and folks looking to protect their valued resources was splattered with blood and mayhem. Land and its assets were so valued, so sought after, that charlatans were known to sell the same piece of land simultaneously to unwary buyers. Shucks, oil hadn’t even been discovered yet!
Lush verdant prairies were fought over in the Old West, much as nations today fight over fossil fuel deposits. No matter how dirty Venezuelan oil might be or European coal or…you get the picture. All sorts of wrangling occurs to control the world’s fuel assets.
Perhaps, it’s time for an inconvenient truth. Economist Ludwig von Mises in his 1947 essay "Planned Chaos," suggested that people in charge often invoke science as a tool to tell folks what to do. He cautioned, "The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people." When folks say "follow the science," they’re really saying "follow our plan" or more correctly "follow our agenda." Science has become the barbed wire of the Old West.
Let’s be clear. The green in the "Green New Deal" that certain vested idealogues espouse is greenbacks…money, lots of money. Most could care less about folks being inconvenienced or even killed, so long as the planet is supposedly saved by their settled-science couched in specious ideology. As thousands of folks died in the Ukraine, the first thoughts of America’s "Energy Czar" were of the war’s impact on climate change. There’s a hypocrisy about it all, as so many "greenies" have the means to not be inconvenienced. They can afford the electric cars while flying carbon-emitting jets and sailing gas-burning yachts or sitting in air-conditioned urban offices around the corner from their rent-controlled apartments. Meanwhile, nations like India and China unabatedly pollute our atmosphere. If you want to be driven bat-guano crazy, look up the U.N. Agenda 21. Fuel wars, indeed!
Who suffers in the fuel wars? In the Old West, it was often ranchers, as range wars over forage access stymied cattle drives. Today, it’s the commuter paying sky-rocketing fuel prices while financially shackled by the figurative barbed wire of runaway inflation caused by out-of-control printing of money. Folks past and present suffered.
Fuel wars? Don’t blame the Russians. For a brief couple of years in 2018 and 2019, America actually achieved the original mission of the Department of Energy established in 1977 to make America energy independent. Energy independence is seen as critically important for economic and national defense security. America depended for decades largely on Middle Eastern, Mexican, and Venezuelan oil to supplement its own production. Fossil fuel price wars have long been in play. Whereas fuel supply and demand of past decades have been subject to the dictates of the Organization of the Petroleum Producing Countries (aka, OPEC), today’s prices are an artifice applied by our own government back in early 2021 by making the oil and gas financing and permitting process a prohibitively expensive and risky business for oil companies. Remember, you have to find the oil and gas before drilling, pumping, transporting, refining, and distributing.
These days, minimum wage folks and retirees on fixed incomes are held hostage to energy alternatives that are out of their reach. It will be decades before electric vehicle charging stations are readily available; centuries before sufficient cobalt and graphite are mined to meet global green infrastructure needs; and still more decades to erect enough unsightly wildlife-killing windmills or install sprawling acres of solar panels. Meanwhile, large segments of our population are forced into needless economic suffering. Heaven forbid that the greenies should wait for alternate energy sources to become sufficiently economically feasible before attacking fossil fuels and their users.
While folks in America’s heartland are pumping gasoline at $5.00+ per gallon or heating their homes with ever-more-expensive propane, they might think on how the world is being held hostage to green ideology through what amount to fuel wars. Think on it especially at the ballot boxes of America. Meanwhile and with deference to von Mises, the greenies can stop insulting our intelligence by invoking their supposed science. Mark Twain nailed it with, "The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie." That cuts to both sides of the fuel wars. Pray that U.S. fossil fuels will yet again be produced sufficiently to bring down prices to 2020 levels and achieve energy independence again.
Foragers in the Old West eventually accommodated barbed wire by finding more convenient ways to feed and bring livestock to market like building roadways and railroads. Today, folks worry about too many cow farts. Just sayin’.
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