Opposing…for opposition’s sake

Your Eyewitness must’ve written about this topic literally dozens of times – but he still can’t quell the intense feeling of disgust and disbelief when these letters appear in the press calling on us to “save the planet” by not only not drilling for oil under our waters but not even using the associated gas!! Now your Eyewitness has nothing against saving the planet!! After all, he inhabits the said planet and would suffer whatever doleful fate that’s predicted by producing and using fossil fuels!!
But he’d rather hug a tree – which, as President Ali regularly reminds the world and us at home, is conserving more than any other country on planet Earth, and which sucks up that nasty carbon dioxide that fossil fuels produce when burnt!! While the exact numbers aren’t available, your Eyewitness is willing to swear that there gotta be at least 1000 trees for EACH Guyanese to hug – as our contribution towards saving OUR planet!! So why shouldn’t we be allowed to use our fossil fuels without getting a guilt trip?? After all, methane’s a worse pollutant than carbon dioxide, and cattle farts and belches produce at least five per cent of global warming – yet there are no calls to ban cattle rearing!!
Now, there’s nothing wrong about citizens scrutinising the actions of their Governments, innit?? But shouldn’t there be some rhyme and reason to the scrutiny – beyond selling newspapers and feeding egos? Now obviously there are some well-meaning sods out there, but your Eyewitness frankly believes that in the grand scheme of things, since that change was engendered during the Industrial Revolution for 250 years – and we received absolutely NONE of the consequent development – we should think about Numero Uno for once – us Mudlanders! Let’s note that it’s the NOW developed countries dragging their feet on fossil fuels being phased out!!
So, your Eyewitness was pleased as Pres. Trump receiving Maria Corina’s Nobel Peace Prize when he saw that TEN bids were received for constructing that urea plant over in Wales!! The gas-to-shore pipelines end there, of course, and gonna power the 300MW generators to boost our industrialisation drive!! The urea plant – to give a shot in the arm to our agricultural drive – also uses the petroleum-associated gas. Your Eyewitness is hoping that the critics of our fossil-fuelled development are choking at the further news that the setup’s gonna be duplicated over in Berbice soon!!
Fact of the matter is this is the same chattering class that opposed the Amalia Falls Hydroelectric Project about a decade ago – and along with the APNU and AFC DID manage to derail it!!
Even though it didn’t produce an ounce of carbon dioxide for the 165KW of electricity it would’ve generated!!

…debt??
One of the US’ founding fathers famously said, “A penny saved is a penny earned,” and this was supposed to be one of the pillars of the “American Way”!! But somewhere along the line since 1776, it appears a new guiding mantra became the standard – especially when it came to the Government!! By the 1960s, not only did they not talk about “pennies” and saving. It became MILLIONS of dollars and spending!!
To signal concern about overspending by the Government then, one powerful senator cautioned, “A billion here and a billion there… pretty soon, you’re talking about real money!” Now mind you, at that time our ENTIRE budget was about US$60 million!! Well, today, the US is still in a world of its own when it comes to spending money!!
Their national debt’s nominally some US$39 trillion – with US$100 trillion being closer to reality! When you’re talking about TRILLIONS, does it matter??
Gotta be real fun when all you’ve gotta do is print pieces of paper, call them “dollars”, and the world gives you goods!!

…Mash
Your Eyewitness almost fell off his chair when he read that the chief proponent for leaving our fossil fuels under the Atlantic just denounced the last Mash as “lawless and a public nuisance”!!
Is she Mrs Scrooge?? Bah! Humbug!!