Oil sure causes a lot of problems, and the United States hardly has any left, and when we invade another country to secure their oil for ourselves, we only end up blowing $132 million dollars per day to import 3 million gallons of petro fuel for our occupying army.

Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s stop using oil and switch to alternative energy sources like biofuels and solar energy and wind farms! Then we can stop having to negotiate with OPEC and the troops can come home and we can build Disney Worlds on every corner with all the extra clean energy!

It seems like I’ve overheard the above paragraph, or a paraphrase, a hundred times around the watercooler. I’ve also heard it’s a pipe dream. And I’ve heard it’s a dream that will come true. So, I ask myself, what’s the truth? Can we really replace oil or not?

Oil: Some Really Good, Good Stuff

Even Alan Greenspan admitted that the Iraq War is about oil, and everybody knows it.

Everybody also knows that over 4100 soldiers have died for Iraq’s oil.

Fewer people realize — or will be honest enough to admit — that a human life has a finite value. When broken down into bodily systems and organs, you might be worth as much as $45 million. And when broken down into your basic elements, you’re only worth about $4.50. Somewhere between the two numbers lies the truth…and just for kicks, I’m going to use the average U.S. wage for 2008, and round it up: Yes, an average human life is worth $20 an hour.

Even fewer people realize what a really really really good deal oil is. Very good approximations have been calculated, and it’s very much in the ballpark to say that one barrel of oil supplies the energy/work of 10,000 hours of human labor (if this sounds somewhat fantastic, go outside, try to push a loaded 18 wheeler up a mountain, and come back; it won’t seem so far-fetched anymore).

Now, let’s bridge those two numbers: 10,000 human hours, at $20 an hour = $200,000.

So, get this…a barrel of oil is worth $200,000 worth of human labor, and right now it’s only going for $140.

And there’s 115 billion barrels underneath Iraq. And there’s 136 billion barrels of the stuff beneath Iran, too!

So, an average human life is worth 45 years * 40 hours per week * $20 per hour = almost $2 million.

Now it should no longer be a surprise what goes on during secret meetings between politicians and oil executives. When the number crunching is done, even a hundred thousand human lives (100,000 * $2 million = $200 billion) in exchange for 115 billion barrels of oil (115 billion * $140 = $16.1 Trillion) is a super fantastic deal! Cheney didn’t even have to think about it, really.

Nuclear Power Plants

Enough war talk…let’s assume we throw out the corporations and lobbyists and Cheney is tarred and feathered. Now, we’re finally going to convert from oil to all that other good clean green stuff. What’s it looking like?

The United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day, or 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year, or about 1.34 TeraWatts (Trillion Watts).

The largest nuclear power plants output just over 1,000 MegaWatts (Million watts), so we could totally replace our oil dependency if we built over 1000 new nuclear power plants. We’ll just split it even and put twenty in each state. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this isn’t going to sit well, especially when sites for waste storage are bandied about. And Nuclear energy does produce waste. No, if we’re going to replace oil, lets choose a CLEAN energy this time…

Wind Power

America has plenty of land. And we have wind. What about some wind farms?

The Horse Hollow Wind Farm consists of 421 giant turbines spread over 47,000 acres in Texas. It’s the biggest wind farm on the planet. And it generates 735.5 Megawatts. With only another 1,821 wind farms as big as Hollow Wind, we can kiss oil goodbye.

Hmmm…ok, what I’m starting to realize is that replacing our daily oil habit isn’t going to be easy. But it IS doable. It’s just on the scale of another Apollo space program. Yes, 1,821 wind farms sounds insane. But really, we only need about 728,400 more giant turbines…

Modern wind turbine generators cost about $2000 per kilowatt, so to totally replace oil, we’re looking at chunking out $2.6 trillion dollars, which is only about 4 times what we’ve spent in Iraq. These wind turbines will last over 25 years and pay for themselves in the first 3 months. Sure wish we’d started building those turbines before going on a snipe hunt for WMD and sinking our economy.

Solar Energy

And then, there’s solar energy.

When it’s operational, the 4,500 acre solar generating station coming to Southern California will have 20,000 dishes producing 500 MegaWatts of power. With just 2,380 more farms like that one…we can kiss oil goodbye.

The thing is, if we only built half the wind farms and half the solar generating stations, made solar rooftops standard, and converted all the shit coming out of Congress and the White House into natural gas and biomass fertilizer, we’d be energy independent. Instead, we’re pouring more oil into corn fields, and burning oil to harvest the corn to make ethanol…ethanol, which uses up more energy to produce than it provides, while providing the middlemen with more of our pocket change, and robbing the poor of affordable food.

If Americans can build the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the St. Louis Arch, the Hoover Dam, the Erie Canal, the Empire State Building, and the Saturn V, I have no doubt we can manage a few hundred thousand windmills in our corn patches. What I seriously doubt anymore is that we Americans can overcome the immense greed of corporations and their lobbyists long enough to make our leaders put their country above their self interest.

Read More: Oil, oil habit, replacing oil, clean energy, alternative energy sources, nuclear power, wind power, wind farms, solar energy, solar power

“The wicked borrow and do not repay.” ~Psalms 37:21.

Check; we’ve got that covered:

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” ~Mathew 5:9

Peacemakers? Heheheh…how about some more money for an invasion:

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Iraq War Cost

“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.” ~Mathew 5:44

But covert ops are so much more fun…

“Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership.”

Yep. Just what I was afraid of. According to the Bible’s scorecard America’s going to hell.

I have to admit, that feels a little unpatriotic saying that. I wonder…is it unpatriotic to say that America is going to hell in a handbasket? I couldn’t find an answer to that in the good book, and when I can’t find an answer in the Bible, I always go to that other living source of wisdom written by humans but inspired by God: Answers.Yahoo.Com!

So, is it unpatriotic to say America is going to hell? The best answer (as voted by users at the time of this post…) comes from ChrissyT214:

No it is not unpatriotic to tell the truth, even if it is hard. It is kind of sad though, after all, it is my country we are talking about.

Others note that it is not unpatriotic to state the bitter truth, as even George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc., all intimated at one time or another that America was going to hell. And when you think about our history…the Civil War, the yellow journalism of Pulitzer and Hearst, the 1929 stock market crash, gay-bashing Republican homosexuals, idiot presidents, and Fat Elvis…you have to start wondering if maybe we just prefer to go to hell…maybe we just like it that way.

So, raise your can of Belgian-owned Budweiser in a toast to the falling dollar, rising gas prices, and picking a fight with Iran when we can’t even whip lesser middle-east countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, while we’re out of bullets and bodies. Yes, here’s to anointing ourselves with steak sauce and then grabbing a sleeping Iranian tiger by the tail and kicking him where the sun don’t shine while his buddy Russia the Grizzly watches! Here’s to going to hell in a handbasket — just the way we Americans like it!

Read More: national debt, Iraq War, war with Iran

Michael Berliner of the Ayan Rand institute reminds us of the original reason we celebrate Independence Day: Freedom from servitude to empire.

Click this link, or watch embedded below: Michael Berliner on Independence Day.

From Garrison Keillor at The Writer’s Almanac:

Today is Independence Day. On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, and the United States officially broke from the rule of England. The colonists were trying to persuade other nations of Europe to be on their side, so they included a long list of complaints about the king. The document said of the king, in part, “HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.”

Twenty-four years later, in 1804, the explorers Lewis and Clark had the first Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi. They were traveling through a part of the Midwest that is now Kansas. They stopped at the mouth of a creek on July 4th, and named it Independence Creek in honor of the day. To celebrate, they fired their cannon at sunset and distributed an extra ration of whisky to the men.

There were unofficial celebrations of Independence Day from its first anniversary, but it really became a popular holiday after the War of 1812. On the frontier, it was the only time of the year when everyone in the countryside gathered together in one place. There would be parades and speeches, and the prettiest and most wholesome girl in the village would be named the Goddess of Liberty. Politicians would get up and call the king of England a skunk and challenge him to a fight. Drunk men in the streets would get into fights and call each other Englishmen. Soon, events like groundbreaking ceremonies for the Erie Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads were scheduled to coincide with July 4th festivities.

And now, for some fireworks, to the tune of a couple of my favorite songs: 4th of July Fireworks.

Read More: 4th of July, Independence Day