Upside Down WorldPlease take the next few sentences not as bragging but as backgorund for what I will say later.
I am over 70 years old. I have more money than I can possibly spend for the rest of my life. I have four successful children. One is a CFO, another is a partner in a large independent securities company. Another is a business owner and the fourth is a VP of her company. None of them need any of my money. They are all sucessful in their own right.
I have great health and have been an athlete all my life and can still beat many who are decades younger than me.
With that said, I should be able to sleep soundly at night - mission accomplished - but I can't.
Why?
Because despite the fact that I consider myself a conservative today, I am a child of the 60s. During the 60s I protested the war in Vietnam and went to school with people who served there and saw and suffered first hand the horrors of that war. Along with others I staged a sit-in at the office of the President of our university for a week to complain about the quality of the hamburgers sold in the cafeteria at the student centre. The list goes on.
When I look at what is going on today, I worry about my generation's legacy and in particular mine. Sure --- I have personally have nothing to worry about and don't need to worry about whether my kids will be successful (they already are) but I worry about future generations and the current world leadership and the stupidity I see around me. It is different than the 60s.
Back then the world leadership were not saints but there was some semblance of common sense and integrity and desire to do the right thing. Frankly, I don't see that now and it worries me. What I see now are leaders who are zealots. Zealots are by definition blind to the consequences of their actions - their beliefs are more important than common sense.
As one example, yes we have a big and real concern over climate change. Over my life I have seen the climate change. In the last year we have seen several "once in a hundred years" climate events. Yes, we should all be concerned about that.
The problem is that the world political leadership and business leaders following their example are in too big a hurry to solve the problem and as the old axiom says "haste makes waste" and I am convinced that they will make the problem even worse. Reminds me a statement that a military General friend of mine once said "Hurry up and wait".
They are passing laws outlawing future use of gasoline such as the recent laws in California banning gas powered lawn mowers in a few years in favour of electric mowers. California is already experiencing electricity grid brownouts. Where is this extra electricity going to come from in this short time period when it takes years to build out the grid if that is even feasible?
These and many other laws will guarantee future electrical grid failures and will result in inflation and a lower standard of living for future generations - or worse yet a total collapse of the system.
In regards to SU, politicans need to admit that the right now the world economy is dependent on oil and that fact is not going to change overnight or in the next 10 or 20 years (like it or not). The plan needs to realize this and find sensible ways to change that fact over a period of time so that the cure is not worse than the disease. They also need to recognize that oil production by companies over time will produce less and less GHG and reward firms that do this - not punish them.
They need to realistically look at the pros and cons of alternatives - destruction of habitat of endangered things by vast solar energy fields - the killing of birds by windmills etc
I could go on but I will stop here.