Energy Planning

I was on a political forum and the subject turned to electricity. After hearing us shoot down the current efforts of liberals and environmentalists to give us cleaner power by forcing us to accept their methods and proposals, one person asked if we had an energy policy to offer rather than just criticisms. I happen to have one, so I wrote it out for them.

The important thing to realize is that everybody WANTS clean, inexpensive, plentiful power. The only reason why coercion has to be involved to make it work currently is because what the environmentalists keep proposing is simply currently unfeasible. (Hybrid cars, for instance, don't even have the gas economy of a simple stripped-down 15-year-old station wagon.) What we have to do is take the shackles off.

Drill drill drill! Though it would be nice if we were independent of all other countries oil-wise, it isn't really necessary. We have two reasons for drilling NOW. First, we want to get in enough oil to stop buying altogether from countries like Saudi Arabia, freeing us in matters of economic diplomacy to criticize their barbarism the same way we do places like Iraq.

Second, right now I'm seeing in the news that Iran and Russia are scaling back on military operations and buildup because the price of oil is low enough to starve out their economies. We want that. We want them in a position where they have to focus on their economy and not on making themselves big and strong. We can turn coal into oil with technology we've had since WWII and make it profitable at $35/barrel. We have the biggest coal reserves in the WORLD. That injection into the worldwide oil community would really throw prices off.

Note: I haven't said we have to fulfill ALL our oil needs ourselves. It would be nice to do if we can. But it's most important just to get us away from depending on people who "don't like us very much". It would also be nice to work the market against them, forcing them to reduce their military operations without having to fire a single shot!

Of course, there's more to it than just getting more oil out. I favor reducing our oil and coal usage by switching as much of the electrical grid as possible over to nuclear. Nuclear power is safe and effective. It's been proven by now. I think all hospitals over a certain "podunk town" size should have their own mini-nuclear generator as well. If nobody else knows how to do it, they can go ask Electric Boat, who powers submarines so safely that one sub recently crashed full speed head-on... and the mini nuclear reactor didn't even have a single problem.

Lower restrictions on vehicle manufacture. Yes, we need to know that you can survive a crash at 40mph. You don't need 50 different airbags, power windows/locks, A/C, or cruise control to do it, and all of those things weigh down a car. Actually, I would like to see enough restrictions lowered or removed for any handyman to build his own vehicle capable of passing standards and being given a license plate. You'd see plenty of fuel economy and alternate-fueled engines popping up in even greater quantity than they do now. Some of them may become commercially viable.

Save the oil for our vehicles (including airplanes) and use nuclear for our stationary electricity. Keep the prices down. That will in turn keep the prices of goods down (transportation) and the people will have more of their own money to spend.

Why is this important? Because friends and family of mine are ALREADY eying geothermal and/or solar enhancements to their house. They already want this. Why don't many of them have it? Well, right now, since the price of food went up, this household has no money to spare each month and a solar setup costs $12,000 to start.

Sure, the price isn't quite enough to offset the energy savings in money yet, but there are other reasons to want solar. For instance, in an area where winter storms knock out electricity, it's AWFULLY nice to have heat and running water in the home. None of that matters, though, if you can't afford to put the system in, and taking even more money away from the people to government-spend on doing it is not nearly as efficient as removing the artificial economic restraints that keep people from doing it themselves.

Nobody needed to be forced to adopt flat-panel TV's, DVD players, designer jeans, or Lexus's. Nobody needs to be forced to adopt personal alternate-energy systems. Just make them affordable, by lowering the cost of living and/or the cost of the product. Once the market gets out of Teh Elites and into the middle class, you won't need to pay anybody to find a way to produce a cheaper and more effective system, either! A 40" 1080p HDTV cost $3,000 a couple of years ago. This holiday season it's dropped below $1,000.

To summarize: We didn't get into cleaner and more efficient oil-burning by forcing people to limit their wood-burning usage, and we won't get into nuclear/wind/solar by forcing people to limit their oil usage. We'll do it by being prosperous enough to afford the Next Step. In the process, as an extra bonus, we may be able to turn the tables on the unfriendly countries who currently have us, as my husband so neatly puts it, 'by the short and curlies'.