Today was a big day for the AEX. We started our morning at Congressman Bob Latta’s Energy Summit at the Ohio State University. There, we set up our usual operations to talk to folks about cap-and-tax and to invite them to join the fight against the national energy tax. What was unusual about today is that we were joined by proponents of the national energy tax who were there to protest the day’s events.
As you can see from the photo, the protesters attended today’s events dressed as cavemen and women. We spoke to some of the energy tax’s supporters, who said they dressed as people from the Stone Age because they believe that the Republican Members of the Ohio Congressional delegation who voted against cap-and-tax belong in the Stone Age.
We at AEX don’t quite get that joke. In fact, we think the cavemen who fight for cap-and-tax perfectly exemplify the point we’re trying to make out here on the road. Any effort to tax our energy and keep us from using the affordable, reliable, and abundant energy sources like coal, oil, and natural gas that built this country would be a return to the prehistoric period– a time before easily accessible air conditioning, washing machines, transportation, or refrigerators, to which none of us are eager to return.
Later in the day, we held a rally in Mount Vernon, Ohio, an all-American quaint little town about an hour from Columbus. Tom Stewart, Executive Vice President for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, spoke to the crowd of about 100 who gathered with us in the Mount Vernon Public Square. The first line of his remarks, “I am big oil,” reminded me of the signs the protestors held this morning.
The fact is, Tom is a third generation independent oil and gas producer. Many people carry the misconception that most of our oil and gas comes from huge, money-grubbing companies–a fallacy people fighting for cap-and-tax continue to proliferate.
In reality, independent producers–companies with about 12 employees–drill about 90% of the oil and natural gas produced in the lower 48 states. That accounts for 82% of the natural gas Americans use and 68% of our crude oil. In Ohio alone, independent producers employ over 4,623 Buckeyes–jobs that would be threatened if cap-and-trade becomes law.
We sure hope Senators Brown and Voinovich consider those jobs, and those votes, when they vote on cap-and-tax this fall.
Good for AEX! Sounds like game, set, and match for the home team. Once again, facts and reality prevail – a sound strategy, that.
By the way, the Luddites’ fashion designers better watch out: They risk getting into trouble with PETA given their leopard look.
Coming to Delaware??
I dig their designer shades, made from plastic derived from petroleum, with bits of metal ripped from Mother Earth, ground into powder and smelted using tremendous amounts of energy into something useful. They remind me of vegetarians wearing leather shoes, and are similarly clueless. In fact, as females of the species, they owe their privileged state of being in large part to the miracles of available energy. In parts of the world where energy is unavailable, women spend the day carrying sticks on their heads for fuel instead of going to class or the office job energy use makes possible. When not doing that, they’re lugging water, rather than turning a spigot where the pumped and cleaned water flows into an air conditioned home. Energy has been the biggest liberator of women in history. They must have been poor students of that subject, just as they are on the subject of energy.
Thank you for what you all are doing! We need to keep educating people out there. I don’t understand what our govt is doing. They are either extremely naive or they’re purposely trying to bury our country into the ground. Again thank you and let me know if you come to Indiana. Be glad to help!
We are an oil-producing nation. The fact that we
shovel money at our avowed enemies for the privilege of not drilling our own oil, is ludicrous.
We have given up everything: our ability to create wealth (America’s “industrial heartland” is now America’s “rust belt”); our abilty to fully utilize our agricultural capacity (we used to “reclaim
swamps,” whereas now we “conserve wetlands”); even
our ability to use our own natural resources!
We have sacrificed everything to the smoke-and-mirrors god of the “global economy” — including
our ability to compete in it.
We have denied ourselves the ability to act in our own national interest, insisting on drowning ourselves in a culture of masochism and quibbling
envy.
I applaud your efforts to try to turn it around.
Fr. Jim <
V. Rev. James Rosselli
LaPorte, Indiana