No matter who wins the next US presidential election, (meaning each presidential candidate currently running has stated that) within the first 100 days of being in office, the next president will put a tax on carbon. Supposedly, it's supposed to help cut down on carbon being released into the air so as to stop global warming. But a carbon tax would raise the prices of food, clothing, oil, gas.. literally everything.

Oil has recently gone up by $10.75 a barrel, and as a result, the entire stock market plunged quite significantly. You see, this not only hurts us citizens, (assuming whoever is reading this is a US citizen,) it also hurts the economy. And my family is noticing this in the products we buy. For example, we always buy Saltine and Ritz crackers. They are now half the thickness they used to be. The packaging is thinner as well.

And the thing that annoys me the most, is there is a simple solution to the "oil crisis." We (The United States) should use our own oil reserves. We have enough oil in our country to last over 200 years. By then we may not even have a use for oil. But instead of using it to help ourselves, we're being greedy, and there have been laws set to forbid the harvesting of oil in our country to protect the environment. The only thing that could be harmful by mining here is if there's an oil spill, which the US hasn't had in any of their overseas harvesting operations for a significant amount of time. And with outdated equipment. Now, I'm for caring for the environment and all, but I think it's a ridiculous excuse to keep our oil hidden away for "the sake of the environment."

The United States of America is supposed to be an independent country. But relies so much on other countries for oil, product manufacturing, and food, that as a result, we seem to no longer be in charge of our nation. The rest of the world has control over our resources, and should something go wrong, or someone get evermore greedy, our resources could just as easily be cut off, or harder to get to; making them more expensive.

Or we could switch to an alternative fuel, like water, or steam. Something everyone can benefit from.

Now I know there may be points in all this that I may not have seen, or may not know about completely. I'm just throwing around what I've learned so far. It just annoys me, is all.