The whole oil drilling catastrophe off Texasraises the question of the need and continued use of fossil fuel in any form. 11 men dead, thousands of endangered fish and birds killed, fishermen economically dislocated, tourism impeded, swimming water quality unhealthy. All for petroleum we can not afford to fill our tanks with because the price is controlled by the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX.com) speculators and not the Capitalist law of supply and demand.

NYMEX changed their website domain over the summer to the controlling private for profit speculators innocent sounding name CME Group.com. The web page is CMEGroup.com but do not let them confuse you. This is the bastion of Capitalist corruption and speculation. These Ponzi boys are far worse than Inner City drug dealers. You need petroleum. BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and the smaller petroleum players are planning on $6 per gallon gasoline by the summer of 2012 to drive President Obama and the Democrats out of power. Many analysts say gasoline at the pump will reach $5.25 per gallon in the first quarter of 2011, causing a severe Worldwide Great Depression. The petroleum industry is scheming to recover oil industry clean up costs of the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Drilling Platform Oil Spill Catastrophe of 2010.

The argument to go cold turkey off carbon rich fossil fuel is clear. The costs, even without Global Warming counted, are not worth the benefits. You can make the argument that our troops are dying for $4 per gallon oil.

Going fossil energy free is quite achievable, requiring efforts similar to the Manhattan Project and the quest for the moon. More importantly, a massive government Clean Deal creates hundreds of thousands of New Energy Technology (ET) careers in every district, from R&D to sales and installation and operation and maintenance.

Why not? We have tried everything else and nothing works. Our fossil fuel addiction is killing us and our troops, sacrificing our economy, environment, safety and mobility and security. Outlaw fossil fuel today. Pass the Clean Deal.

Yet, energy policy is becoming less a political party issue and more of an individual candidate's issue. Sure, the major parties will still sensationalize, seizing on its personal appeal for media coverage. But energy use is the world economic engine. The world's energy consumption is growing rapidly as the Emerging World develops modern lifestyles. This is very positive for the world economy and for all energy types.

The coming several decades will see needs for every source of power generation the world can muster. The world will need every energy source in the next 100 years as we become more like each other, including coal, oil and nuclear, to natural gas, propane, wind, solar, tidal, hydro and biomass. Concerns for externalities are now commonplace in energy siting, development and construction. The world is properly pricing both the known and the unknown external societal, health and economic impacts of all types of energy exploration, development, distribution, use and disposal.

Energy is essential to our very life almost as much as water, food and shelter. The world has progressed rapidly in the past half century under multiple political views to internalize the externalities, both known and potential, to attempt to reduce them from all types of human activity

As the Congressional and State elections swing into gear, the parties will offer slogans of their solutions. The Right, usually merely pays lip service to environmental issues. The Left usually urges action but appropriates few economic resources compared to Germany, Great Britain and China. As an example of the unique nature of energy siting review Cape Wind public statements from key politicians, the Kennedy's oppose Cape Wind as does Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) but Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts (D) and President Barack Obama strongly support Cape Wind.

The Obama Administration is funding modest new nuclear facilities and clean coal. President Obama is also allocating modestly more funds for wind, solar and other Clean Energy through Federal grants to State and local governments. Governor Patrick has astutely used free Federal dollars to vastly expand Clean Energy generation in Massachusetts. Several other states have also exponentially increased market penetration of Clean Renewable Energy in the past 2 years.

Pricing carbon and environmental damage from all commodities, especially energy, is wise. The free market will decide the outcome. For a very long time the world will continue to rely on and use coal, petroleum and natural gas. Yet the world economy is diversifying its energy sources and locations. Many reasons dictate this reality. Intangible military costs and political outcomes force the requirement for energy localization and decentralization for the next several decades.

Energy, food, defense and monetary policy always glue the world economy together. More localization, regionalization, diversification and reduced external societal damage will strengthen the economy, provide local jobs, and meet growing energy needs while reducing the known and mostly unknown effects of energy consumption.