Bold Plan Required To Truly Become Energy Self-Sufficient

By Carol Petersen Columnist

On April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic began her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York. She was the largest, most luxurious, purportedly safest ship ever to sail. Built with a double- bottomed hull and 16 water-tight compartments, she was billed as unsinkable.

Just before midnight, the Titanic struck an iceberg. With lifeboats for less than half those aboard, more than 1,500 souls were lost and the most lavish, magnificent ship built for luxury and comfort came to rest on the ocean floor.

Do you ever feel as if our ship of state, the United States, could benefit from studying some of the fatal errors made by the Titanic almost 100 years ago?

Our nation has come to think of itself as unsinkable. We are well- built. We offer the good life. We eat, drink and make merry, expecting that our resources will always provide for our every need, want or wish. We think of our appetites as part of our Constitutional rights. We have a right to that Hummer. It is the government’s job to ensure us the fuel to keep it on the road.

The problem is that the countries who have been content to travel in steerage while we party in first class – India, China, Africa and the Middle East – have awakened and want to join us in the Grand Ballroom. They have as much right to the good life, the cars, the technology, as we have. They are developing rapidly, outpacing us. They outnumber us, and their energy needs will far exceed ours, since they actually manufacture things while we have become simply middle men and consumers of their products.

Meanwhile, there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the crow’s nest or on the bridge of our ship of state, looking through binoculars for a long term safe path through the ice field that threatens to sink us.

Oct. 6, 1973 Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on Yom Kippur. The Arab states made a conscious decision to use oil as a weapon and punished Israel’s allies with an oil embargo.

That spurred the beginning of research into solar and wind energy, and the development of smaller, more efficient cars. Toyota, Honda, and Datsun/Nissan were born. But with Israel’s victory, and Arab need for cash, the embargo ended in March 1974.

Look around your neighborhood for solar panels on houses and you get a picture of how long that embargo held our attention. The oil was flowing again. Business as usual.

Six years later, the Iranian Revolution, oil workers’ protests, the removal of the Shah and installation of the Ayatollah Khomeini disrupted Iranian oil production. Jimmy Carter decontrolled oil prices, installed solar panels on the White House and installed a wood stove. Great. Another crisis. Long gas lines, some rationing, and Americans taken hostage by Iran.

That cost Carter the presidency, and Ronald Reagan was elected. Happy days are here again! Hostages freed, solar panels removed, the oil spigot is open once more and, again, we return to life as usual.

Another brief crisis in 1990 as a result of the first Gulf War when Saddam set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields. But did we learn anything?

The energy crisis is two-fold.

The first, and most important, is securing an energy supply that cannot be manipulated, limited or used against us.

The second is affordability, but we cannot be paralyzed by a hyper-focus on dollars and cents in the short term. We need vision and long-term planning, and the courage to take bold steps to become energy self-sufficient.

We need a comprehensive energy plan, but we cannot keep talking and wrangling and bickering and remain stalled by partisan gridlock. We need those we send to Washington to shift from partisan politicians to public servants who represent the best interests of their constituents and the country as a whole.

Like the Titanic, a ship of state cannot turn on a dime. Implementation takes time. We need to explore today. We need to drill today. We need to find our own natural gas and oil. We need to exploit coal. We need to start building nuclear plants today.

And simultaneously, we need to develop every alternative we can discover, from hydro, to tidal, to wind, to solar, to switch grass on plains areas sitting idle in the middle of nowhere.

We cannot afford management by crisis anymore, not with the energy crisis, not with the health-care crisis, not with the housing crisis, not with an economy in crisis.

It is time to avoid crashing into icebergs instead of trying to bail out the sinking ship after each collision!

Petersen is a freelance writer, artist and photographer from Lancaster Township.

(c) 2008 Intelligencer Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.