Reply #14: I don't think so...

[DeSwiss]

When OPEC imposed its 2nd set of price hikes in 1976 I had a freshly minted college diploma in my pocket and a car that got around 10 miles to the gallon. Gas prices wnet from a 100% increase to a 200% increase in a matter of weeks. The minimum wage then was $1.35 per hour. I concluded right then and there that as a country, we ought not allow ourselves to be put into a situation where others controlled our sources of energy -- and our future. Yet only weak-as-tea efforts were made since that time and little has been done toward gaining back that control. The result is our foreign policy is held hostage and we have propped up dictators -- one against the other -- in order to continue the flow of oil. Our lifeblood.

While there may be all kinds of difficulties and explanations for the reasons why we can't move to alternative energy sources, and about how hard it'll be, as long as these are the only dynamics of discourse on the issue, we'll never do a damned thing. Most of the major changes we've seen in our lives have come about not because everyone was in agreement about how to go about it, but because someone said, "I'm not waiting for a consensus, something needs to change now!"

So the first step is to DO something. Changing tax laws to heavily favor the development and use alternative fuels is one of those things. Heavily investing our tax dollars in new technologies and energy sources is another. Reducing lost energy through conservation and improvements in insulation, fuel economy, etc, is another thing. The government imposition upon vehicle fuel providers like Exxon, et al. of a requirement to begin modifying and providing facilities for the use of alternative fuels, solves the problem of distribution. If not, then government low-interest loans for new businesses that will. If such businesses need to be subsidized initially, fine. Its not going to happen for free and it won't be cheap. The one thing we CAN be assured of, is that the cost of foreign oil is going to increase. And in that cost we must factor the amount of our resources that go toward protecting those sources. Like the war in Iraq, for example.

The alternative is to wait and argue what is the best way and the best plan and nothing happens. That's what we seem to be best at as a country these days. There won't be a "single magic bullet solution," for this. Life is messy and so is the solution to this problem. It seems as if everyone is looking for a liquid replacement fuel to take the place of gasoline when there isn't one. At least not one that doesn't require more energy to produce than it provides. So it will take a number of different alternatives. And when there is money to be made, you can bet the market will finds a way to do it simpler.

So for anyone who supports waiting until we get it just right, all I can say is that this is a recipe for disaster. We waited for the government to impose controls on the stock market and throughout the late 1800s crashes were devastating and frequent. Until the big one came in 1929 and brought the country to its knees. We waited to find fuel-efficient cars until the Japanese and Europeans took our lunch in the 70s by building VWs and Toyotas, resulting in the permanent layoff of American auto workers. An industry we once dominated and now hold maybe 40%. And when the Soviet Union had satellites beeping over American soil in the late 1950s, we finally elected a president that wouldn't wait:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. And therefore I believe that before this decade is out, we will have landed a man on the moon and returned him safely to earth." ~ John F. Kennedy May 23, 1961

This is the leadership we need. Not consensus building on how we should begin, but someone with a vision and the fortitude to help us move forward. And then DO something.

IMHO

~DeSwiss