Alternative Energy Time-Warp
14 May, 2009
©Pirate Joe

    I’ve got the alternative energy blues. It’s probably because I’m not too bright: you see, I’ve got this silly notion that “alternative energy” should  be “conventional energy” by now.  Yes, I said now: not in some Mother Goose fairyland time-frame some sixty years after we’ve landed on Mars. For some strange reason I can’t shake the notion that after 36 years, it’s utterly unacceptable that (vis à vis alternative energy) we’ve accomplished absolutely nothing, and that those scumbag oil futures traders have started to ramp up gas prices again, despite the fact that we’re in the Great Depression of 2009.
    O.K., I’ve figured it all out. It’s really still 1973. Yeah, that’s it. It’s still 1973; I’ve been dreaming all this 2009 stuff and everything in between. When I wake up, Nixon will still be president, the Vietnam War will be raging, people will be asking: “what’s a watergate?”, folks will be queuing up in gas lines, no one will have yet heard the relentless pounding of disco (and) it’s only eleven  years ‘till 1984! (like, scary, man).
    I don’t feel so bad now. It’s like, we (just) haven’t had enough time to deal with this Arab Oil Embargo thing, but I know that all those cool alternatives I keep hearing about on the evening news will be reality by 1978 at the latest, and we won’t have to think about OPEC any more after that. I can’t wait! Everyone will have backyard solar panels or wind generators, or both! I’ve also heard that you could drill down about 3Km and get free heat! Amazing!  It’s pretty clear that by 1980 or so, all these things will be quite common, after all, why would we still be giving billions to OPEC for something we could get for free? That would be kind of silly, right? Right. Nobody would let that happen.
    I can’t wait to wake up and tell my friends about this bizarre dream, after all, I dreamed that it was 2009 (!) and we were still getting less than 1% of our electricity from wind and solar! Imagine that! In 2009! (no one is going to believe me, we all know that by 1990, petroleum will account for only 15% of our energy needs ). They will probably start throwing things at me when I tell them that gas actually hit $4.50 a gallon in 2008, and that the icons of the environmental movement started endorsing nuclear power in 2007. They’ll laugh and tell me that if I keep having dreams such as these, I’d better go see a shrink. Come to think of it, I’m not even going to mention disco.
    Besides, if I’m going to be able to make it to their pads tonight, I’ll need to get gas today. This is an “even” day and my license plate is odd, so I’ll have to “borrow” someone else’s plates to get on the gas line. Hope I can get that done before the guy hangs out the “Sorry, Nix-on gas today” sign.
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