We can have a healthier environment with less pollution by integrating more renewable energy into homes, which in return adds excess energy into the collective energy grid. We can then either use the collective grid or the renewable energy produced from our home to charge our electric or PHEV cars. However, the beauty of oil is that pound for pound it is loaded with a lot of energy. Oil has produced our civilization today and it allows us to produce our renewable technologies. Consequently, oil should be saved and used appropriately or wisely. Instead, we unnecessarily consume oil with a zealous greed. The caveat is that oil not only gives us energy but carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas. Oil also produces other pollutants.

A certain amount of carbon dioxide is trapped underground within oil reserves and a certain amount aboveground within the atmosphere. Civilization adds to the carbon dioxide aboveground via tailpipe emissions. The automobile is but one instrumentality or utility amongst many that we use to convert oil into carbon dioxide. We have the technology to live in a cleaner world today and facilitate civilization to bank its oil wealth. We can then collect on the interest incurred. The amount of oil left in the ground represents wealth and wealth represents power. We live within an oil rush. It is sad but it is our reality. You can live in reality or you can shy away into a zombieotic or robotic like existence. I however want to save the polar bears. Polar bears not only represent nature’s ingenuity but as a species they are symbolic in that their health and survival or extinction will reflect our priorities as a species. From the Washington Times:

A Bush administration decision on listing polar bears as endangered species and victims of global warming has erupted into a separate battle on Capitol Hill to block oil and gas exploration in order to protect the animals’ arctic hunting grounds.

The administration delayed its January deadline on whether to list the bears, but is moving ahead with a separate move Feb. 6 to issue new permits for oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea, which Democrats and environmentalists say they oppose….

“Robert Frost wrote about two roads diverging in the wood, and here we have the Bush administration looking down two roads with regard to the polar bear,” Mr. Markey said. “Down one road lies the survival of the polar bear and the orderly consideration of oil drilling and global warming and common sense. Down the other road, too often traveled by this administration, lies regulatory lunacy and a blatant disregard for moral responsibility.”

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