Motivation behind global warming activism has never been about concern for the planet or life on Earth. Aside from using the evidence of a one degree rise in global temperatures over the past 100 years to promote global socialism (which was nothing more than recovery from a one degree drop in temperature over the previous century), there is another angle that should be considered, and if it’s the real reason for high gas prices today.

We hear all the time about oil company record profits from people who want to blame them for prices at the pump. The fact is that oil company record profits are a result of high gas prices, not the cause of them. Is an 8% profit margin on your product too much to ask? If an oil producer’s cost is $1.00 per gallon of gas, they sell it for $1.08 per gallon. Then the government adds on up to 65c tax before it goes to the pump. The oil producer makes 8c on that gallon, the real profit goes to the government.

Now consider, if the cost of crude oil doubles as it has recently, and say the refinery can produce a gallon of gas for $2.00, they sell it for $2.16. Still an 8% profit margin for the oil company. If their cost goes up again and now it costs them $3.00 to produce a gallon of gas, they sell it for $3.24 and still maintain their 8% profit margin but now they’re making 24c per gallon instead of 8c per gallon. As a result, their profits go up. The oil companies do not set the price for a barrel of crude oil. They are merely the buyers and the victims of OPEC. The oil company's responsibility to the stockholders, the real owners, is to make a profit.

As with any business, the increase in their costs is passed along to the consumer. Remember that the next time Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton talk about raising taxes on the oil companies and stealing their profits. They are really talking about stealing from the American people. Any company that can’t make and keep their profits will quickly go out of business. But then that seems to be what the Democrats want when it comes to the oil companies.

As with any other industry, the selling price of their product is figured at cost plus a fair profit margin. Just try to find an industry with a lower profit margin than the oil companies. You would be hard pressed to find one that even comes close. When those profits are made, they don’t go to a few executives sitting around in a board room, they go to the stockholders who are the American people. Even if you don’t own stock directly in an oil company, those dividends are paid to mutual funds and retirement accounts which have investments in oil. In one way or another, everyone is effected by oil company stock dividends.

The bottom line is that oil companies are vital to the survival and the economy of the United States in producing the energy that the country runs on. But what if you own, or have friends who own, competitive businesses in alternate energy? How can they compete with the big oil companies?

When was the last time you ever heard any prominent Democrat say anything nice about our oil companies and energy producers? All we've heard for years is "evil, big oil," "evil Enron," and "evil, big energy." In spite of tax incentives to oil and energy companies out of necessity that the Democrats now want to take away, Democrats have been trying to turn the public against energy producers for decades. We have been hearing this since long before anyone was talking about global warming.

Big oil companies are friends of Bush and Cheney. Big solar, big wind, big farming, and the big Sierra Club are friends of the Democrats. Global warming makes it easy for them to divert the country's priorities from oil development, to alternate fuel, even when it is not needed for the next 100 years. That’s right. We have enough domestic oil resources to last the country for the next 100 years if only we were allowed to use them by Congressional Democrats.

By the time our oil begins to run out, we could easily have new energy technology and fuels to replace it. It doesn’t have to be done right now. What is urgent to the Democrat hoaxers is to usher in global socialism before anyone realizes what they’re doing, and while they are still in power to do it.

But there is a big problem. Oil is the most practical, efficient, and least expensive form of energy we have available to power our engines. Any alternate product developed so far costs twice as much to produce and is far less efficient. So how can we get the people to accept paying a much higher price for alternate fuels like ethanol? The answer is - cause the price of gasoline to increase while subsidizing alternate fuels with tax money until they are economically competitive.

But why are we having to pay over $3.00, with a projected $4.00 a gallon, for gasoline? It’s because we are at the mercy of OPEC simply because the Democrats have blocked our domestic oil companies from expanding their production for the past 40 years while our population has continued to increase. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that supply and demand dictates that if you try to fuel a country of 300 million on a 40 year old supply standard based on a population of 250 million, the price is going to go up. And when you have twice as many cars on the roads, you’re going to have to import oil and gas to make up for the shortage. I can’t believe Democrat strategists didn’t see this coming, and in fact, planned on it.

While Nancy Pelosi refuses to bring renewal of the Terrorist Surveillance Act to the floor of the house for a vote, she is anxious to get global warming legislation passed.

Using global warming as an excuse, our tax money is being diverted from oil company production incentives to alternate energy development. It still costs $6.00 a gallon to produce ethanol, but they can put it on the market for about $3.00 by paying the other $3.00 with our tax money. The tax paying public is still paying $6.00 a gallon, but now they have made ethanol appear to be competitive with the inflated cost of gasoline. Our tax money has now been diverted to the environmental friends of the Democrats and away from what the country really needs.

The worst part is that you have to use a fuel source to produce ethanol. To put it one way, if your fuel source is heating oil, it takes a gallon of oil to produce 1.2 gallons of ethanol. It would be the equivalent for using any other source of energy to produce the ethanol product. Or to put it another way, it takes 1.2 kilowatts of electrical energy to produce enough ethanol to generate one kilowatt of electrical power. A net loss of .2 kilowatt. The difference is due to the lower energy efficiency of ethanol. Does that make any sense?

Ethanol production also creates more pollution than does gasoline production. The pollution comes not only from the ethanol refineries, but also from the huge farm lands required to produce the corn it’s made from. Why is it that environmentalists don’t complain about that pollution? Because it doesn’t fit their agenda.

The other day I stopped into my regular donut shop for my morning coffee and bagel with cream cheese. When I got back 15c in change from my $3.00 instead of 25c I commented “you raised your prices.” The owner of the shop explained to me that it was necessary because the price of donut flour had gone up. I asked him how much the price had changed. He told me that a $28.00 bag of flour now costs him $40.00.

This is the result of wheat farmers turning their farm production to corn to cash in on the new farm bill giving them higher taxpayer paid subsidies for producing corn instead of wheat. As more and more farms turn to corn for ethanol, the price of everything else is going up, and we are still producing enough ethanol for only 6% of our fuel needs. Will we have anything to eat, or can afford, when farms are producing 25% of our fuel needs? Sure we will. We will just be importing all our food from China. I don’t even want to go there. You already know the dangers of that.

You may have noticed the price increase of many of your favorite grocery products, including bread and meat. These increases are because of this Congress, their hate for the oil companies, their love of alternate energy fuels, and their environmentally conscious, global warmey friends who produce them. Not only are we paying for ethanol with our tax money, but in our food purchases as well. Wouldn’t you rather pay $4.00 a gallon for gas than have your entire cost of living go up by 30% in less than 2 years? Congress isn’t giving you that choice. You’re going to be paying $4.00 a gallon for gas, AND your cost of living is going up 30% in 2 years.

The sad part is that none of this is necessary. It’s all just politics and politicians lying to the American people. Rather than giving billions of our tax dollars to farmers and environmentalists in support of a hoax, that money would be better spent as tax incentives to the oil companies so they could provide the energy products this country needs. Farmers could then concentrate on producing the food this country most definitely requires.

Once there is a consensus among the American public that all this global warming hype is nothing but a scam and a hoax, will Congress then stop this nonsense with our tax money and restore some common sense to their energy and farm policies? Don’t hold you breath. They will more than likely just find some other excuse to continue ripping off of taxpayers while pursuing their own socialist agenda, regardless of how much harm it does to the country.