I am putting together a series of posts regarding my Presidential Campaign Platform. I am not actually running for President of the US for a few reasons. One reason is that I am 33. Another reason is that I have no political experience. And lastly, I am a very reasonable person who does not enjoy lying, therefore no one would ever vote for me.

The first part of this series will be the issue of oil and the environment. There is some evidence out there that we are warming the planet through our use of fossil fuels. If you doubt this, you are a capitalistic pig who doesn’t understand science and you are obviously being paid off by the Bush-Cheney-Halliburton-Big Oil evil empire. Or you may just have an understanding of the fact that our planet has been warming for thousands of years.

So, why am I concerned about the issues of the environment? Well, to be honest, it’s the smell. I believe we should have a cleaner environment, and I happen to know that there are a number of smart people developing the technology to help do this. I also object to the fact that the most important commodity in the world is helping to support terrorist activities all over the globe. So I am going to quickly outline the things that will help this issue that all of the politicians are currently ignoring.

I am also looking at this from an economic standpoint. Our economy has been fueled by bubbles for the past two decades. We had an unsustainable tech bubble that was followed by an unsustainable housing bubble. They were unsustainable because our society dumped too much into something that was pretty limited. You can only have so many profitable websites and you can’t build two houses for every family. There are some economic minded types out there who believe that the green movement may be the next big thing in the economy. Some of the ideas would create many new jobs and there are a number of companies who would greatly benefit by getting their green ideas off the ground.

I need to quickly let you all know that your Congress is not making any attempt to help you at all on this matter. Congress, in its infinite stupidity, had another session in which they drug executives of Oil companies to a hearing claiming that they were going to investigate high oil prices. Well, if you happen to watch cspan, you are well aware that this was not the case. They drug them to this meeting for the sole purpose of bitching and whining so that they could tell their districts that they care about them. One oil executive actually told them that if they would simply pay more attention to steps that oil companies have actually taken, that they could cut down the demand for energy by 30%. He told the members that his company had been consulting other companies and helping them install solar panels and take other steps to cut down on their energy consumption. Weird huh, an oil company was making money by helping people use less oil. Anyways, he explained that this was all spelled out in a very detailed report that they made available to Congress long ago, and that Congress had completely ignored the report. The response to the common sense approach this executive gave them was ridicule and harassment. **We also watched Maxine Waters tell an oil exec that she wanted to socialize the industry, how Hugo Chavez-like of her.

This is what happens when an oil executive tells you that they are helping find ways to cut down on energy consumption. Congress tells them that they are assholes. One of the promises made by the Democrats in 2006 was to combat high oil prices. It seems that they are losing this battle by leaps and bounds. I’m wondering about their exit plan?

First things first, nation wide high-speed rail systems. High speed rails can be used to efficiently move both people and goods from city to city and also from coast to coast. I went to the website for a popular airline to check the amount of flights from Fort Lauderdale Florida to Tampa Florida. For the date I entered, there were 9 flights, one way. This is less than a 300 mile drive. If one airline is offering this many flights, I can only imagine how many flight there are on all airlines, in both directions, for such a relatively small distance. A commercial aircraft uses enough fuel simply getting off the ground to drive a car 1,500 miles. What is hilarious about this is that in the time it takes to check your bags, get through security, and sit there waiting for the people to buckle up, a high speed rail could have made this entire trip, safer and using less fuel.

A well designed series of high speed rails that connect major cities, ports, and areas that produce certain goods, will get rid of numerous airline flight, get food moving trucks off the road, and get cars off the road. How much oil does this save? I have no clue, but I imagine that it is quite a bit. By the way, this also makes it less expensive to transport all of these goods that we use in everyday life. These rails could be paid for using bonds, at no cost to the taxpayer.

Second thing, hydrogen. I know that this has some controversy, so I give you Honda. They have a hydrogen car that will be on the road soon. They are working on the infrastructure to run it. How are they doing this without grants from the US government you ask? The answer is this wonderful little thing call capitalism. That is the philosophy of providing the people with things they want in exchange for billions of dollars.

So, I currently have two big steps that will cut down on oil use by a huge percentage. I’m not sure how much, but I do know that the biggest use of oil and the largest contributor to CO2* in the US is our roadways. I would take the time to gets specific numbers from experts, but those are just facts and figures, and therefore won’t mean anything to most people. I’ll write more later, but this is it for the moment. I will also be putting together more ideas for my fake campaign on other posts.

*Quick note, the reason I said that I will write more on this later is to add ideas to this post and to make any corrections. One correction was made when someone pointed out a mistake about greenhouse gases. I did make a change and pointed out that roadways are the biggest contributor to CO2, not greenhouse gases. If you have more intelligent ideas that don’t involve the raising of our taxes by the alarmist, please leave a comment.

** Added 5-27-08