Not all News is Bad News June 30, 2006 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

For example, I just found out this morning that the Cape Wind project is moving forward. Cape Wind is “America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Miles from the nearest shore, 130 wind turbines will gracefully harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. In average winds, Cape Wind will provide three quarters of the Cape and Islands electricity needs.”

It is very likely that we’ve already hit Hubert’s Peak. Hubert’s Peak is the point at which oil demand will outpace supply, and therefore the prices will never go down again. While some may say we have years to reach this point, and others say the high prices are because of gluttoning Oil conglomerates, I would say that high prices are a good thing for America. Cheap oil means that the American consumer does not think about his or her energy usage. High prices, however, force us to consider our energy footprint. Dollar signs float before our eyes before any trip in an automobile. We want to save money, and this translates into saving gas, which further translates into lower greenhouse and particulate emissions. You get me?

High prices are a good thing.

Just think about all the hybrid car commercials on TV. Even the SUV commercials, still so much a staple of our televised sportscasts, are mentioning their gas mileage (“best SUV gas mileage in its class…”) — energy use is now in American consciousness.

I don’t want prices to go down.

I want the assholes who drive the huge Hummers and Suburbans not because they need to ferry 15 people but because they want a huge car to cringe every time they fill their tank. I want them to reconsider their purchase, and I want people to scowl at them as they drive by for their excessive self-indulgence.

I want a hundred more wind farms and solar powered energy plants and hydrogen powered automobiles whose only exhaust is water. I want to walk through New York City and for once smell the spray of the nearby ocean without the sooty tinge of car exhaust clogging my nose.  I want clean energy and I want it now, and the only way that’s going to come about is if people demand it. The good news is it’s already happening.

And, in other good news, because I did use the plural in the title, Eli Talgam, who I interviewed here on this blog a few weeks ago, has released new poems on his site Paper Bugs. The poems are as good as ever, and it just proves to me that Hoboken culture is not dead. It’s alive and kicking (and so are the many babies that Hoboken women are wheeling around.  I wonder if they will read poetry when they get older.)