Why not oil

Or really making America great

Real quick someone rephrased the MAGA phrase to Making America Greatly Ashamed on one of the storyboards the other day. Thought it was a bit creative.

So why oil or why not oil. As the regular readers know I am not a big fan of oil and for many reasons that are just as important as climate change. Yet let’s take a moment to discuss how we can reduce the use of oil in our world. Now the obvious is energy and using renewables and since that has been done by me and countless others I want to touch on some other aspects of how the oil industry impacts our world and what we can be done differently. And even more ironic is most of the industries existed before oil, can still be utilized; be much more beneficial; and improves our economy in the process.

I will agree that making the switch on some of these products means quite the effort, yet well worth it. And we do not want the government dictating how we should live so this is something society should buy into, but if done properly much can be gained. And the only real government intrusion would be tax incentives, local and national, and getting the private sector or at least some aspects of it to help start the investing or investments. I think there are starting to be some individualistic billionaires who might view some of the ideas as opportunities and help out.

I am going to break it down by industry and these are brief discussions. If you take on this task, then much more planning and detail would be needed.

The retail industry is struggling and so anything to help keep jobs and even bring back brick and mortar stores is a benefit. Remember when clothes were made from wool and cotton. Why did we stop? These fabrics are much more comfortable than polyester and other synthetic oil by product clothes, they are recyclable, and with planning can benefit the environment. And this can help local economies (remember I am big on closing the wealth divide) in a few ways. First cotton is an agriculture product that can be regrown year in and year out. Costs of clothing would tend to fluctuate with cotton prices, but overall, we increase agriculture development, we can employ people to create more clothes locally, and stores can even sell locally developed products like Farmer’s markets do. We could have similar stores based on what is manufactured. For certain areas, this creates or recreates an industry that once thrived, reduces our reliance on oil, and brings back some Mom and Pop type stores or industries. This is the simplistic version, yet if you step back and look at the dynamics of our country you can see how certain geographic areas thrive, which you balance out with developing other areas. And one way is of course raising sheep for wool. Same as above, however, wool products and clothing developed and you can trade both throughout the country depending on climate and season. Cotton and wool create better clothing that wears better and lasts longer. So why not.

Another industry that floundered with the oil industry is glass and we can also add aluminum to this discussion. Glass and aluminum are recyclable. Both create manufacturing and recycling jobs and these types of jobs are also better suited at more of a local level or at least regional level (such as large state or a combination of certain metropolitan areas). So instead of throwing away inordinate number of plastic bottles every year, we can go back to stressing these products which saves on the environment and helps to create local and regional employment.

For now, a couple of examples that does not affect us in our daily lives by switching over and offers or reoffers economic development on a broader scale.

We are accustomed to using oil by products in our everyday lives, yet over and over again it proves to be poisonous to us and our environment.

Other industries such as automobiles and energy will thrive without oil. We have the opportunity to show the world that oil is not the end all be all product we make it out. Other benefits of transitioning off oil: it helps with national security; reduces pollution; and because as time as gone on oil is one of the major drivers of creating the wealth divide since fewer and fewer people benefit from higher oil prices, we can offer other opportunities to more people. The oil companies, Wall Street traders; certain countries, that quite frankly do not have our best interests; all contribute to consolidating wealth for their benefit which does as much damage to the world as oil itself.