Good afternoon,
As you know, there is something terribly wrong with the energy situation in America right now. The summer driving season is still a month off, and we’re already seeing gas over $3 per gallon. Many of us have just come through a mild winter paying heating costs that could never be considered ‘mild’. There are many ideas that are being discussed, yet no real relief is in sight.
Why? Why is this such a difficult riddle to solve? Affordable energy is not only an issue that affects us all, it is an issue that spans those focus group categories we all love to hate. It is an economic issue; it is a foreign policy issue; and at its core, it is a moral issue.
As our President, himself an oil man said, America is addicted to oil. This is the truth, but it is a difficult truth to accept. We have for so long depended on oil and its hydrocarbon fruits for cheap, portable energy that to acknowledge that we must begin to move away from it is an uncomfortable notion at best.
For this reason, many of the proposed ‘solutions’ are not solutions at all; they are politically expedient band-aids put forth by legislators unwilling to put the time into trying to heal the underlying wound.
Are $100 gasoline rebates the answer? Of course not. Don’t get me wrong, I like having $100 put back into my pocket just as much as anyone else does. But it is a temporary fix to what we all, deep down, know is a problem requiring a long term solution.
Many of the proposed energy bills have also suggested pawning off our natural refuges and environmental havens to the oil companies so that they can extract the oil that lies beneath those lands. Though difficult, we must take a step back and realize that this is unquestionably the behavior of an addict. We are like a crack addict about to auction off our most precious belongings for that one more hit that will get us through the night.
But tomorrow morning when we wake up, we’ll need another hit. But we’ll have nothing remaining to sell, left with only an empty addiction to fill.
This is why a fundamental shift in strategy is needed : because anything else is merely postponing and worsening the inevitable.
It is time to set an aggressive timetable for improvements in CAFE standards.
It is time to begin offering real incentives and grants for research in alternative fuels and efficiency methods.
It is time to offer significant individual incentives to those citizens who take the initiative in conserving energy and utilizing alternatives.
And most importantly of all, it is time for us as a nation to make a choice : In whose hands would you rather put the future of your children and grandchildren? The profit-driven dinosaurs of the oil industry, or a renewed and refueled spirit of American ingenuity?
I will take American ingenuity any day.
