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America's Energy Policy Needs a Dose of Reality |
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Written On: December 14, 2006 |
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"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." The old English saying captured neatly the gap between fantasy and reality. A similar chasm divides those who want immediately to take us from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy sources with no damaging consequences. Nice thought, maybe, but it's not going to happen overnight. The reality is more complex ... and more encouraging, once we bridge the ideological divide.
The inconvenient truth is that, when policy-makers sacrifice facts for fantasy as they have in shaping America’s energy future, the damage can be extensive. Consider: 173 nuclear reactors are producing power in Europe, four more are under construction, and others are planned. Nuclear power has been used there safely and affordably since the 1970s and produces no greenhouse gases. But here, the subject of nuclear power is DOA –- dead on arrival, forcing us to exploit alternatives that are more costly and more damaging to the environment.
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the Prudoe Bay oil fields have produced 15 billion barrels of oil for our country since 1977, and caribou herds thrive around the pumping facilities and beneath the pipeline. Yet the proposal that would utilize more modern, vastly superior technology to drill in a tiny percentage of ANWR's tundra to restore our nation's energy independence is the "third rail" of American energy policy -- politically untouchable. Again, driving up costs and pushing us toward more environmentally hazardous alternatives.
Instead, policy-makers and the media ricochet from one new energy "solution" to another -- solar, wind, hydrogen and now biofuels. Each one, in its turn, is heralded as the solution to our energy woes –- cheap, clean power that will eliminate fossil fuels and save the planet. Enthusiasts display the blind devotion typically reserved for one's first love. Questions about cost and practicality are brushed aside, and serious media scrutiny is nowhere to be found.
But our need and desire to move toward cleaner, more affordable energy will succeed only if we face reality, ask the tough questions, and make informed, reasoned decisions.
Take the energy solution de jour: Biofuels, touted as the environmentally-sensitive alternative to fossil fuels. Farmers, environmentalists and politicians have jumped on the biofuel bandwagon. Governments around the globe mandate its use to create a market. Brazil uses half its annual sugar cane crop for auto fuel, and The New York Times reports that 40 new ethanol plants are under construction in the U.S., aiming to boost domestic production by a third.
But the rush to biofuels has an ugly side that few want to acknowledge.
Brazil is accelerating deforestation to grow more sugar cane and soy beans. Malaysian and Indonesian rainforests are being bulldozed and burned to create palm oil plantations. On the island of Borneo, home to some of the world’s most pristine jungles, fires set to clear the forests created a thick bluish haze that darkened the city of Pontianak at midday and sickened tens of thousands of people. Farmers in India are planting and irrigating so much sugar cane for biofuels that the water table is dropping. Millions of acres of land that would otherwise grow grain for people now produce crops for fuel. The grain required to make enough ethanol to fill an SUV would feed one person for a year.
Sure, biofuels have promise, replacing part of our fossil fuel requirement and releasing fewer greenhouse gases. But they are not panaceas, and they are not without potentially devastating side effects. Disturbingly, the enthusiasm for biofuels seems to have foreclosed exploration of other energy solutions, including clean coal, nuclear power, and oil.
That's why it's good news when lawmakers act responsibly to develop our proven energy resources, rather than put their faith in unproven technologies with clear, negative consequences.
Congress recently passed a bill that would allow oil and gas development in 8.3 million acres in the eastern Gulf of Mexico adjacent to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The new development area is expected to produce more than 1.3 billion barrels of oil – more than the proven combined reserves of Wyoming and Oklahoma – and nearly 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas or six times today's annual U.S. natural gas imports.
The key to an effective energy policy is open, honest debate – and balance. We simply have to consider the consequences before rocketing off to the next panacea. That makes sense no matter where you live.
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