Really the only smart answer when it comes to energy is to use everything: solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal, etc. We can use oil and coal as a holdover, but we should really be doing everything in our power to move away from each as both have significant costs.
Oil creates more problems for our economy than just about anything else, and is one of the leading reasons why the dollar depreciates with respect to other currencies. The dollar is pegged to oil. OPEC does everything in their power to keep oil prices high. This ends up screwing up the currency.
Coal at least doesn't cause those kinds of problems, but it has plenty of other baggage along with it. It really is the least attractive of all the available fuel sources we have.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
