Oil Debate "Spills" Over

For quite some time, in response to the nation's energy needs, many voices, mainly in the Republican Party, have shouted, "Drill baby drill!" President Obama recently went along with plans for more offshore oil drilling. Now we have witnessed what is fast becoming the biggest oil catastrophe in history. The oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico not only threatens wildlife there, but it threatens the jobs of many Americans employed in the fishing and seafood business so dependent upon the Gulf's resources. Further, beach areas are threatened. Supporters of more drilling say, "This hasn't happened since 1969," but I say, "It only takes once!"

We have to be honest with ourselves. This country has let the energy situation slip away from it over the decades. Democrats, and certainly Republicans, have shied away from anything that might inconvenience us for a time. All of this has led to an ever increasing dependence by America on foreign oil supplies. Certainly a case can be made that without our money flowing out of this country and into other countries' bank accounts, a number of them downright hostile to America, the terrorist threat of recent years would not be as great.

We and the developed world are dependent on energy to fuel our economies. We are caught in a very bad situation due to our failure to address this problem decades ago. I'm not against trying to find new sources of oil in the short term, but we've got to kick the habit, or we will continue to finance the very people who hate us most. We almost certainly will help finance the development of nuclear weapons by our opponents, namely Iran. Now, you might say that we don't buy oil from Iran, but that's irrelevant, since we consume oil from other suppliers, forcing some oil-hungry countries to seek oil from Iran. You can't get around this.

As for "drill baby drill," it's easy for some to say such things, since they don't live anywhere near areas of potential oil disasters. Having been born and raised in a coal mining area, it's easy to urge more coal use, and the jobs that can create, but ask how many people want to live next to facilities that burn coal. (Pardon while I cough) Like with crime, we all want the criminals locked up, but we don't want prisons near us.

WORD HISTORY:
Oil-This goes back to Greek "elaion," which meant "olive tree," this coming from Greek "elaiva," but where this came from is uncertain, although it is thought by many to come from an eastern Mediterranean language. In ancient times, olive oil was the most common form of oil. Latin picked up the word from Greek as "oleum," and Old French, a Latin-based language, continued with "oile." The "French" that developed in England after the Norman Conquest, called Anglo-French, had "olie," and this gave English "oile/oyle/ile." English "supposedly got the word in the 1100s, but I also found sources that noted Anglo-Saxon (Old English) having "aele/ele." This would suggest that we got the word earlier than the 1100s, as the other Germanic languages also use forms of the word, all apparently borrowed from the Latin form (again, with Latin having gotten the word from Greek). German has "Öl," Dutch has "olie," and Swedish has "olja," for examples in other Germanic languages. Of course, over time, the word came to mean more than just oilve oil, and you need only check out the price of gasoline at your neighborhood station to know what I mean.