Why It Works: Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is no longer a niche for bright-eyed entrepreneurs and people who want to be "different." An expansive, competitive field, renewable energy holds more than promises for America: it holds a solution. Not a temporary one either, but a long term release from soaring oil prices and air pollution. Renewable energy is the answer for a struggling American economy, the expansion of the market for clean energy would create thousands of jobs and, if implemented correctly, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy would be short enough to overtake fossil fuels as the major power source in the United States as well as allow those in outdated and obsolete jobs to receive training in the new fields. However, for this to happen, many steps must be undertaken in order to defeat public apathy about the energy crisis our country faces and also to receive funding to expedite our transition to renewable energy. America's future as a clean, efficiently powered country can be realized by experts and citizens alike and lead to a new era in American history only if there is a paradigm shift in public consciousness that leads to an realization of renewable energy through information and stewardship.

With all of the moaning and groaning about high gas prices, high food prices, and high costs in just about everything, it's easy to feel overwhelmed about the simplest decisions. However, stuck in this madness is a problem far greater than anything that comes out of the ground: apathy. The public at large is fed (or chooses to ignore) the simplest of details about the "energy crisis" and uses that as a base to make consumer choices all the while sounding like idiots trying to use big words to cover up their deficiency in knowledge.

The truth is we have enough oil to last us for at least another century at our current rate of consumption. Here's a mind bender: the United States burns ten thousand gallons of oil a second. If you throw in the exponential growth of underdeveloped countries like China and India and the proposed Kyoto II protocol, that oil reserve which took two millions years to make would be depleted in anywhere from 50-100 years. Despite how harrowing these numbers are, it's not even the tip of the iceburg. Ask your parents about the OPEC oil embargos in the 1970s. Ask about the two hour waits at the gas pump and the rationing that took place then when gas was only pennies on the dollar. If something of that nature happened today in the US, citizens would torch cities. "I have to wait two hours to pay a hundred dollars so I can fill up my Escalade!?" Believe it. Given the sociopolitical instability of so many oil producing regions in the world (the Middle East, Kenya), the geographical impossibility of some regions in which to drill (Siberia and Kamkatcha), or the geopolitical ramifications of drilling (ANWR and Canada) the world is facing a decision none of us want to make: wreck the environment to fulfill the needs of a growing world or pray that scientists come up with a magic bullet that won't take fifty years to implement and thus render it useless by the time it comes into play. We're facing a grave problem ahead of us, and the situation could already be so much better if people knew about the whole problem, not just what shows up on the homefront.

Furthering this maddening campaign of misinformation and subsequent misappropriation are the acts of our Congress. It finally seems like they have opened their eyes to the monumental problem facing us not only in the fuel sector but in energy as well. Despite this, they have been very passive, making empty promises and focusing on gap solutions and obsolete energies. An example of this is ethanol. Touted as "America's clean fuel," ethanol in the US is derived from corn. As previously stated, ethanol is cost prohibitive when derived from corn. So what does Congress do? Sink 1.4 billion dollars into ethanol subsidies that will eat up 5 million hectacres of corn that could be feeding Americans and lowering food costs instead of buoying a faltering sugar cane crop and giving hope back to thousands of farmers in Louisiana and Florida. This is one government misstep that could make the ineptitude of FEMA pale in comparison.

It's better to address this problem now than in the future when the situation will warrant a serious concern not unlike the specter of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War. The funny thing is my hyperbole may not be as far from the truth as you think. If one country were to have a monopoly on the world's oil reserve (OPEC does not have a monopoly, it's more or less a cartel) the effects on developed countries would be devastating. The lack of energy diversity is the number one problem facing our planet right now. Our dependence on fossil fuels have contributed to global climate change, though the data needs more time to be analyzed. It has also left the United States at a loss from a national security standpoint. We need oil and if our supply from less-than-friendly countries were cut, the nation would almost come to a standstill. The groundwork for alternative energy was laid by the Kyoto Protocol, an act the United States refused to sign over concerns about the leniency granted to China. President Obama will have no such excuses not to sign the next major global environmental act when it is passed sometime toward the end of his first term in office. There will be a time when America's energy policy will have to override national defense interests because the energy policy will become our defense policy. A self-sustaining national energy grid would be our best defense against oil embargos, terrorist attacks, and foreign arm wrangling. My message to Washington is: the sooner the better. Now, where's that ethanol?

Paul Algu

Media / Interview Requests? Click Here.