A constant source of amusement is the signage in our
supermarkets indicating an aisle where we might find “Foreign Foods”. Are you
kidding me?! The whole shop is full of foreign food. From the meat counter to
the frozen food and ice cream to the pasta and rice and fresh produce. It’s
mostly foreign food. Even some of the “local food” has significant components
of foreign raw materials.
Our ability to copy wholesale the format of the layout of
our supermarkets from North America or Europe is exemplified by the fact that
the Foreign Food sections of our stores display Japanese, Thai, Chinese and
Mexican spices, condiments and specialty items in exactly the same way that one
would find them in Selfridges, Green Giant, A&P or Walmart; in the Foreign
Food section and labeled as such when the whole store is a foreign food bazaar.
Perhaps this explains our mindless replication of energy
policy and response to global warming as promulgated by the EU and to a lesser
extent by the United States. Now that Global warming has been put under the
microscope and found to be somewhat less than incontrovertible the cant has
been shifted to climate change. The solutions for climate change, however, remain
the same as they were for global warming and the hysteria accompanying the
search for a holy grail of energy that is non-polluting, plentiful and cheap
continues unabated among the anything but hydrocarbon crowd. Climate change what
a wonderfully nebulous term that defies definition or measurement. It can be applied equally to warming or
cooling, flood or drought.
The hoopla that accompanied the screening of a film on
climate change and the announcement that the UK government will be spending £75
million in the Caribbean over the next four years to address climate change
issues was good headline press. As usual the devil will be in the details as EU
consultants will be hired and EU products sourced to provide us with green energy
solutions. At the same time, our Minister of the Environment announced a
proposed investment of 377 million tax payer dollars in a green energy centre that
would produce energy from wind, solar and landfill gas as well as a developing
a waste to energy component. If this is such a good deal why is the private
sector not lining up to invest in it?
All this at a time when one alternative energy company after
another collapses in America. The failure rate is staggering despite support through
massive federal grants and loans and billions of tax payer dollars have vanished.
Germany recently announced that its decade’s long subsidization of alternative
energy projects, primarily solar, has not had the intended result and will be
significantly reduced. At the same time T. Boone Pickens who has lost millions
in his well publicized wind energy projects now sees natural gas as the
solution to America’s energy problems.
The Minister of the Environment now promises a National
Climate Change Policy when we do not know what climate change is taking place.
The global warming that everyone has been talking about has disappeared over
the past 10 years and the rate of warming for the past 22 years has fallen far
short of the predictions of the UN experts at the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
The reality is that fossil fuels will provide the bulk of
the world’s energy needs for decades to come. The Barbadian geographic and
economic profile demands a high density energy solution that is best delivered
in today’s world by natural gas.
T. Boone Pickens has
finally got it right!
No comments:
Post a Comment