I heard earlier this week that oil was under $100 a barrel. The price of gasoline and home heating oil has not declined in direct proportion. You didn’t expect it to, did you? Good! Then you weren’t disappointed.
There’s been a lot of talk about an energy policy for the United States. If we could power our nation on talk about an energy policy, we would certainly be free of dependency on imported oil. Obama wants to conserve oil. McCain wants to drill for more. Paris Hilton says, “Do both!” It’s sad, disturbing and surprising that Paris Hilton makes more sense than either major party candidate for President of the United States. I hope it was the first and last time that happens.
Someday if oil becomes rare enough burning it will be illegal, because the petrochemical industry will be much more important. Even if you think about it, you probably have no idea how many things you use every day are made from petroleum. I’ve seen public service announcements recently urging people to eschew bottled water because it’s environmentally unfriendly. All those plastic bottles are made of oil folks. And they take almost forever to decompose in landfills, so drinking your water from a glass or some other reusable container seems like a good idea. Here’s another one.
As I said I would be, I was back in Lake Placid this week. Nice place: As long as it isn’t winter, I recommend it. I almost stayed there too long though. It was 33 degrees, but still technically summer when I got up on Friday morning. If you like skiing or other cold-weather sports, you may disregard my recommendation and go there in the winter too.
While there, I stopped in a supermarket. There’s only one in Lake Placid, so you could figure out it was a Price Chopper, even if I didn’t tell you. There, I bought travel-sized toothpaste and travel-sized shaving cream. In addition to coming in a tube and an aerosol can respectively, each of them came in a blister pack.
I know the advantages of blister packs. They make it easy to hang the cans and tubes on display racks. They also make small items hard to put in your pocket and therefore, hard to shoplift. We all know some of the disadvantages. I hate packages that require tools to open, especially packages of hand tools that require power tools to open. And if what you bought turns out not to be what you thought you needed, you destroyed the package to find that out, making most stores unwilling to take your purchase back and refund your money.
But those PSA’s about bottled water made me realize, that blister packs, since they are unnecessary and made of plastic, waste oil too. So I hereby join the ranks of McCain, Obama and Hilton in attempting to define what our national energy policy should be.
Prevent blister packs and save oil.
