Joseph L. Shaefer submits: Oil, natural gas, and coal are anything but fossils. Mother Nature was kind enough to compress various forms of carbon over centuries, millennia and eons into giant batteries called “formations” for our use. Their age may make them fossil fuels, but their usability and cost make them future fuels. One day, alternative energy sources like wind, which we’ve used for hundreds of years, and solar, which we’ve used for thousands of years, may be focused and collected and priced to be competitive with oil, gas, and coal. But for the immediate future, any “subsidies” fossil fuel extraction companies realize in the form of depletion allowances, accelerated depreciation, etc. are more than offset by the massive taxes at the federal and state level that is levied upon their finished products – unlike alternative energy sources.Complete Story »
