Oil Drilling a Slick Topic at the GOP Convention

There was a lot of buzz in the Twin Cities with GOP in town for their soiree. Among the many was to push for greater development of offshore and Alaskan drilling. Most GOP’ers are behind the push for greater domestic production to offset the dependence of foreign energy sources.

As noted in a TownHall.com article today, the delegates from California were cool to the drilling initiative, citing the 1969 oil spill off the California coastline. Being alive at that time, let me recall our family car back then:

1968 Pontiac Executive
400 CI / 6.6 liter engine
3-speed TH-400 automatic transmission
6 passenger
Fuel economy – 8mpg local / 13mpg highway

Wow…the car even had a 4-barrel carbuerator (not fuel injection), points (not electronic ignition), no smog nor catylitic converter, bias ply tires (which wore out at about 20k miles) and weighed as much as a Hummer H2. How did we ever manage to exist!!

Try comparing that to a full-size car of today…it’s virtually impossible.

SO, you’re trying to tell me that we, as a nation (or world for that matter) haven’t learned a damn thing about lighter, safer, more fuel efficent and environmentally friendly cars in the past 40 years? Balderdash!

Is the same not true for the oil drilling industry?

C’mon folks, stop with the ‘pristine environment’ chants. Until we can run our economy on CO2, the argument of environmental concerns are sounding more and more hollow.

Maybe if we had to tune up our cars every 6,000 miles again, we’d be reminded how far we have come since ’69.

Drilling for oil a hot topic at GOP – TownHall.com