Oh Yeah? Well My Dog's Bigger Than Your Dog.

My cousin and I are currently debating American energy issues. Now aside from calling each other names and all manner bad things, it really comes down the fact that he claims I'm against energy independence for America while I accuse him of believing that we can drill our way out of our troubles by burying our heads in the sand. In fairness, he thinks we need to do research in alternative fuels but the government should stay out of it. He claims he's against oil industry subsidies. He says Edison didn't need the government to invent the light bulb. What he doesn't admit is that subsidies allowed the oil industry to develop into our unchallenged transportation energy industry. In my remarkable and unquestioned rebuttal, I point out that so long as we devote our resources to a "drill baby drill"  mentality,  alternative energy research, in any real sense, will not take place. In a perfect world, if everyone accepted the facts that evolution is real, global warming is taking place and humans are at least partially responsible and the world is not really flat, then I would suggest that we accept some additional oil exploration, a great deal of natural gas production take place, and all coal fired energy generation be replaced by that natural gas in order to at least mitigate the pollution of our planet while simultaneously investing in the necessary research into electric autos and alternative energy sources. Secretly we would probably agree. Publicly we mimic congress. That is to say we act just like the we did when we were little kids fighting over who should get the ice cream cone first. In other words just like congress. In other words we're unwilling to admit the other one may have a few good points. In other words just like congress. So I guess that no matter whether my cousin and I can agree, until congress can begin to agree, we're stuck being at the mercy of countries that don't like us. And we'll keep giving them our money for that privilege