One More Trip to the Energy Well

Can we finally fess up and admit we have a problem? Please? It might get some of us to shut up for a minute who have been bitching for thirty years that we have a problem and we need help. I suggest that every SUV driver out there go to the childrens section of their local public library and read The Lorax by Sr. Seuss.

What did it accomplish for Reagan to disdainfully have the solar panels taken off the White House as one of his first official acts as POTUS? I can tell you what it accomplished: It told big energy that all bets were off and they were back in charge, so feel free to bend the American public over and give 'em the screwing of a lifetime. And friends, that is precisely what they did.

Now we come to 2006 - and the house of cards is falling down. Gas is stabilized at around $3.00 per gallon. CAFE standards have been ignored, scoffed at, and essentially gutted. Every other vehicle on the expressway seems to be an SUV with a single occupant, making the daily commute from an ex-urban McMansion.

Some things are too important to be left to private industry, and responsible energy policy is one of them. Private industry is profit driven. Period. If there is no profit motive, there is no reason to pursue a particular path. It is in the interest of big energy that we remain beholden and dependent upon their products. Thats econ 101.

We should have been working on these problems for the last 30 years, but instead the decision was made to fiddle while Rome burned, the problems could be punted to the next generation. And those of us who were agitating for responsible energy policy were dismissed as cranks, spoil-sports, worry-warts, and Nervous Nellies.

Well, we got the last laugh - except there is no humor in this situation. But what I wouldn't give to have been wrong.

The sand has about run out of the hourglass, and the time is overdue that we suck it up. We need a massive effort - on the scale of the Space Race or the Manhattan Project - to develop energy alternatives and increase efficiency of existing technologies. We must look toward the future and stop cleaving to the past.

First off, we need to get it through our thick skulls that carbon is dead - literally and figuratively. That's where the term "fossil fuels" comes from, after all. All future power generation needs to be wind or nuclear. No more coal-fired plants, no more natural gas powered plants, and if we can't get power from rivers without damming them up, we need to eschew hydro-electric.

Second, we need to cultivate and encourage public transportation. Instead of giving a hundred-dollar tax credit to every automobile owner in America, how about we levy a tax on automobiles and give tax credits or deductions for public transit fares? And let's raise the gas tax by at least $.50 per gallon. Use that tax revenue to invest in energy alternatives and as an incentive to conserve.

Third, we need to invest in green technologies in all future governmental building projects, and offer tax incentives to private businesses and consumers to employ green technologies when private construction is undertaken. A good place to start would be to reinstate the alternative energy tax credits that Reagan allowed to expire in 1986.

Once we grow up (it isn't too late - yet) and pull our heads out of the sand, and admit to ourselves that some future technology isn't going to come along and save us so we can continue on our merry, self-destructive ways, we have taken the first step. The next step will be to act on that realization and demand of all future and current candidates and elected officials energy accountability and the intestinal fortitude to do what is right, not just politically expedient, the better off we will be.

If we don't, be prepared to do the old nuclear drill - remove the all sharp objects from pockets, bend over, and kiss your ass goodbye.