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Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz
I do not see this as the answer to anything. If we really enter a depression, your frugality will not even save you let alone the country.
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I admit to being a bit hyperbolic there.
I was eluding to a certain amount of self-sufficiency making things a bit less painful.
Actually, Dave, energy is what worries me the most. The rest of the political stuff is on the back-burner for me. We cannot survive the massive bankruptcies that will result from lack of, or unaffordable, fuel. It affects every sector.
Richard Branson, the famed entrepreneur seems visibly "shaken" by the reality that we cannot go forward in our present dependency on oil. He's heavily invested in other forms of energy..but it appears it may not be soon enough. Branson was on some CNN special and he says we've had absolutely terrible leadership in this regard......non existent, actually. Many Americans don't realize that as China is emerging, they are using massive quantities of oil/gas.
They are, and will be competing with us for oil. Exploration, drilling and building refineries will take at
least a decade. We can't wait that long. And we don't know when THAT would run out. Heck, we don't even know what the Arabs have......how much oil is down in the ground there? Maybe less than we think?
It's a very dismal situation. If you go to Brazil, they are happily skipping along without having to use much. That was our biggest mistake.....giving serious consideration to getting off oil was something we should have started doing 30 years ago. (Of course, if the world's major economies collapse, nobody will be skipping along whether they use oil or not).
A new President in 2008 is not going to *fix* this. For me, this election is just about not having Bush. It's a step forward, but no panacea.
