Bismillah Assalamu Alaikum
“There is only one meaningful response to the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and that is for America to stop messing around when it comes to designing its energy and environmental future. The only meaningful response to this man-made disaster is a man-made energy bill that would finally put in place an American clean-energy infrastructure that would set our country on a real, long-term path to ending our addiction to oil. That is so obviously the right thing for our environment, the right thing for our national security, the right thing for our economic security and the right thing to promote innovation. But it means that we have to stop messing around with idiotic ‘drill, baby, drill’ nostrums, feel-good Earth Day concerts and the paralyzing notion that the American people are not prepared to do anything serious to change our energy mix.”
Those are the best opening lines and that is the most sensible content of any column Thomas L. Friedman has written for the New York Times. Well, of the ones I’ve read, anyway. The piece is entitled “No Fooling Mother Nature,” and I encourage you to read it , if only to understand better what might have been. Unfortunately, it’s written about a decade too late. Even if the leaders of the The United States of America, Inc. were smart enough to act on it immediately, and they are not, and the American people were prepared to do something serious, and they are not, there’s just not enough resources or time left to do it. Production of oil is declining faster than it can be replaced with new wells. The finite limits of this and other non-renewable energy resources are in sight and the consequences of befouling the atmosphere and poisoning the water and soil are all around us, obvious to anyone who bothers to look, but we are still pushing the pedal to the metal. The “drill, baby, drill” mentality behind the Gulf oil spill is just the latest example of a country, a civilization, stuck in a short-term mindset, selfishly consuming non-renewable energy and other natural resources without a thought about the implications for future generations, incapable of making the hard decisions, the right decisions, today, because the rewards would be postponed until another day.
As Winston Churchill famously said, “You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted every other possibility.” In this case, Americans have also exhausted the financial resources, industrial infrastructure, natural resources, and lead time necessary to do the right thing, i.e., to convert from oil and other non-renewable energy sources to a mix of solar, wind, tidal, and other renewable sources. Now that we have spent, off-shored, outsourced, and consumed the necessary resources and we have day-dreamed and frittered away the time necessary to do those things, Tom Friedman is frightened and angry enough to write a column about it. Too little, too late.
USA, Inc. is dependent on non-renewable resources for almost all of its energy needs. There are 250 million vehicles in this country that run on fuel made from oil. Electrical power is generated by coal (48%), natural gas (21%), nuclear fission (20%), and oil (1%). Of the renewable energy sources feeding the electrical grid, hydroelectric (6%) is the primary source, and of the other renewables (3%), which includes solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass, none contributes over 1%. To convert this country’s transportation and power generation from non-renewable to renewable energy sources would take trillions of dollars and literally decades of time, not to mention immense natural, industrial, and human resources, as well as strong and visionary leadership, unprecedented political cooperation, and whole-hearted public support, effort, and sacrifice.
If that’s what it takes, we’re in big trouble, because we don’t have it. So our country and the larger civilization of which it is a part will have to make do with less and less energy, until the fuel tanks run dry. By that time, the civilization, or what remains of it, will have contracted to a size that can be powered by whatever natural resources are left — like windmills, water wheels, and feet.
Of course, energy is but one of the multiple and simultaneous crises that we face.
“There is only one meaningful response to the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and that is for America to stop messing around when it comes to designing its energy and environmental future. The only meaningful response to this man-made disaster is a man-made energy bill that would finally put in place an American clean-energy infrastructure that would set our country on a real, long-term path to ending our addiction to oil. That is so obviously the right thing for our environment, the right thing for our national security, the right thing for our economic security and the right thing to promote innovation. But it means that we have to stop messing around with idiotic ‘drill, baby, drill’ nostrums, feel-good Earth Day concerts and the paralyzing notion that the American people are not prepared to do anything serious to change our energy mix.”
Those are the best opening lines and that is the most sensible content of any column Thomas L. Friedman has written for the New York Times. Well, of the ones I’ve read, anyway. The piece is entitled “No Fooling Mother Nature,” and I encourage you to read it , if only to understand better what might have been. Unfortunately, it’s written about a decade too late. Even if the leaders of the The United States of America, Inc. were smart enough to act on it immediately, and they are not, and the American people were prepared to do something serious, and they are not, there’s just not enough resources or time left to do it. Production of oil is declining faster than it can be replaced with new wells. The finite limits of this and other non-renewable energy resources are in sight and the consequences of befouling the atmosphere and poisoning the water and soil are all around us, obvious to anyone who bothers to look, but we are still pushing the pedal to the metal. The “drill, baby, drill” mentality behind the Gulf oil spill is just the latest example of a country, a civilization, stuck in a short-term mindset, selfishly consuming non-renewable energy and other natural resources without a thought about the implications for future generations, incapable of making the hard decisions, the right decisions, today, because the rewards would be postponed until another day.
As Winston Churchill famously said, “You can always rely on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted every other possibility.” In this case, Americans have also exhausted the financial resources, industrial infrastructure, natural resources, and lead time necessary to do the right thing, i.e., to convert from oil and other non-renewable energy sources to a mix of solar, wind, tidal, and other renewable sources. Now that we have spent, off-shored, outsourced, and consumed the necessary resources and we have day-dreamed and frittered away the time necessary to do those things, Tom Friedman is frightened and angry enough to write a column about it. Too little, too late.
USA, Inc. is dependent on non-renewable resources for almost all of its energy needs. There are 250 million vehicles in this country that run on fuel made from oil. Electrical power is generated by coal (48%), natural gas (21%), nuclear fission (20%), and oil (1%). Of the renewable energy sources feeding the electrical grid, hydroelectric (6%) is the primary source, and of the other renewables (3%), which includes solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass, none contributes over 1%. To convert this country’s transportation and power generation from non-renewable to renewable energy sources would take trillions of dollars and literally decades of time, not to mention immense natural, industrial, and human resources, as well as strong and visionary leadership, unprecedented political cooperation, and whole-hearted public support, effort, and sacrifice.
If that’s what it takes, we’re in big trouble, because we don’t have it. So our country and the larger civilization of which it is a part will have to make do with less and less energy, until the fuel tanks run dry. By that time, the civilization, or what remains of it, will have contracted to a size that can be powered by whatever natural resources are left — like windmills, water wheels, and feet.
Of course, energy is but one of the multiple and simultaneous crises that we face.