It is said that the shale oil out West contains around 3 trillion barrels of oil. When will we be ready to make an effort to develop that resource, when the Gulf spill reaches Miami Beach? The beaches of the Carolinas? The Gulf of Maine?

It is also said that the technology doesn’t exist to profitably extract the oil from that shale. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the will to extract it doesn’t exist. Perhaps the right people don’t own the right to control that resource. Oil rules absolutely with a dark and murky hand.

They say it would cost too much to get shale oil, but what about the costs of the spill in the Gulf? Initially, BP will shoulder the costs of cleanup and litigation, but big oil knows how to ease the risk of disaster. In the end, it will be paid for at the pumps by the general public.

There is a rush for windpower. It is said that once they generate enough power to pay for themselves, the generators have to be replaced. This technology is a dead nut. Maybe, after a while, that will not be the case, but do we have time to play with?

Natural gas, shale oil — that is where America should be putting its shoulder to the wheel. Those are the things that have a future.

Andy Bennett, Buckfield