Big Awl

I'm constantly asked by "conservatives" when I speak to them about the chronic energy crisis we'll be living with for the foreseeable future (while we dwell within the great vacuum of leadership that is America) is this: shouldn't we be working toward energy independence (from the Arabs) by ramping up domestic exploration and drilling? An unspoken codicil to this is that the US Government would pay for this expansion through subsidies and tax breaks.

The answer is no.

First, the subsidies and tax breaks given by the US Government to oil companies come to over $6bn a year - at a time when the 5 biggest industry players collectively announced over $342bn in profit last year. The oil industry doesn't need our tax dollars, but our government slime, who have received over $58m in donations from it since Bush took office, are falling over eachother to gift them with your money.

Secondly, there are no proven reserves to tap. The ANWR field the neocons are salivating over could potentially contain some 10bn barrels of crude. Or none. Lotto was at $32mn last week. I'm still not buying.

Thirdly, there are real, attainable alternatives that could be implemented in several years as opposed to several decades, the primary being solar.

Imagine if we took the $6bn we give to the oil industry and used it instead to manufacture and install solar systems for appropriate structures in the country that received enough sun to make it worthwhile. At $18,000 per 2kw system, that's about 333,000 installations generating 666,666 megawatts of electricity every single day!

Imagine a nation of three hundred thousand electric plants. No terror attack short of blowing up the sun could knock us off the grid. Structures that produce more than they use would return the energy to the grid to be sent to structures that don't produce enough, with no changes to the consumers pay producers model we have in effect today. Use more than 2kw, buy from the utility. The utility buys overproduction from people for redistribution.

No nuke, no coal, no gas, no petrol plants needed.

I realize the greatest problem with this, in this political climate, is that it inverts the current model of take from people/give to business. Thus it has little hope of becoming reality any time before November. But who knows what could happen after?

Could our nation ever be so "enlightened"?

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

No, no. We can't have any good ideas re energy.

Remember, it's not about energy, it's about profit.