Short Term, Medium Term, and Long Term, Energy That Is, Swimming Pools...

Earlier this week (or was it last?) Ed Cone noted one of the problems associated with the "pro-drilling" argument. No matter how fast we move it will take a long time before new oil from offshore sites, or oil shale, or from ANWR, to come online.

This issue is one where I think we all have to compromise, and we all have to suffer together, and as much as possible question not only "special interests" and entrenched ideologies, but even in some cases to our own ideologies. I know, that's easy to say...

I just don't see us getting out of this energy mess from the left or the right.

I think we have to take a strong super short term, short term, medium term, and longer term approach, and everyone's special interest has to give - everyone's, yeah, even mine.

I don't think we will ever return to the days of cheap energy. I am not sure that is all bad. We have not been good stewards of cheap energy, and have wasted very precious resources we only get to use once. We can't simply blame that bad stewardship on the government or corporations. It's our collective fault. We'a culpa.

Now is our time, together, to have the wisdom to look not just a year ahead, or five or ten, but even twenty and fifty, yes, even one hundred years ahead. The well being of our children and their children depend on it. Our national security depends on it.

There is almost nothing "free" about the energy supply/demand "market." Both supply and demand are controlled and manipulated by powerful forces. And all the while real demand is growing as huge nations modernize. There is little we can do to stop that. There is little we should do. "Oh, India, we're sorry to inform you and your people but you have to stay poor while we use all the world's energy. It's for your own good." Yeah, right.

There is no short term fix that will take prices down to levels of a year ago. The best we can hope for is to decrease price increases. Perhaps changing the rules on how who gets to invest in oil futures, and how much "down" is required, would help. I try, but I do not understand this very well, and I don't think most Americans do, and it is hard for politicians and pundits to get this message across.

Leaning on suppliers to pump more, as Saudia Arabia seems willing to do, will marginally help. Perhaps opening up a portion of the strategic reserve would help a little.

I do not understand very well how the the value of the dollar, and thus Fed policy, impacts this issue, though lots of talking heads seem to think it does. They just disagree with each other on how and how much.

Somehow we are going to have to decrease consumption, increase domestic supply, all the while biding time for all the amazing and new forms of renewable energy awaiting us down the high tech highway.

But there are things we can do NOW however that, incrementally speaking, could lower our consumption and even if just slightly decrease the pressure our demand is placing on supply.

Of course, there are all the everyday ways that people can use less gas and electricity. The government could help by increasing incentives to replace low efficiency appliances, heating and cooling, electronic devices, etc. Perhaps there could be incentives for encouraging public transportation and carpooling.

We could also force all automakers who make OR sell cars and trucks in the US to increase efficiencies of their fleets. All of a sudden it's everybody's business what everybody drives, and it's in our national interest to force these changes.

Personally I would like to see us lower the highway speed limits to 55 or 60 again. This would have an immediate short term impact on our oil demand. Fuel efficiency of cars and trucks plummets as speeds increase above 55 or 60 mph. We did it once. We survived. We can do it again.

It costs money, and I am not sure where to get it, but it seems we have to start looking at a future with much more local and intermediate distance public transportation, which may mean a much increased investment in rail systems and such.

I'd go ahead with some, but not all, of the off shore drilling plans, as much as it pains me to say so. I have never supported offshore drilling, but the benefits as well as the weight of world wide evidence regarding the safety of offshore drilling forces me to conclude that we simply have to do this. It won't matter much today or tomorrow, but ten years from now our kids will thank us.

I'd stop the ethanol idiocy immediately. People need corn. Our air needs woods, not agricultural fields. This ethanol deal has been a political boondoggle and a human disaster. We need to stop it. People need that corn, period.

I can see designating a few out of the way places in the Rockies for oil shale. It ain't pretty, but it beats some of the options, especially if it can take some of the pressure off coal. The technology is there, and it's now financially realistic.

I cannot bring myself to support oil drilling in ANWR. I am not sure my opposition is fully rational as much as symbolic. I think we just need to leave ANWR alone.

Drilling for oil and natural gas will increase our domestic supply in the 8-25 year range, maybe longer. it's a stop gap.

I personally strongly advocate nuclear energy. Here we have a medium term (10-50 years) solution that would radically impact our energy independence. The more I read about the new generation of reactors in France and Japan the more encouraged I am about this option. Yes, there is the waste issue, but with a good breeder reactor system we can recycle a lot of the spent fuel. Other very environmentally conscious countries store the waste safely; I think we could too.

There is the huge advantage of cleaner air. There is also the advantage of reduction in need for more environmentally damaging energy sources, like coal. A new generation of nuclear reactors could gradually replace the need to burn as much coal, natural gas, and oil, clean up our air, and lower our carbon footprint at the same time.

But all of this is to bide time for our long term energy future, a future we cannot fully envision, but which will involve renewable energy sources like the sun, wind, chemical potential energy (new types of photovoltaic cells perhaps) , gravitational energy, and the mere energy of motion - whether lassoing the motion of a car as it slows down to recharge a battery, or that of the tides or rivers. We have just barely scratched the surface of alternative energy, and now that energy generally is more expensive, there is more and more incentive for the private sector to invest heavily in the next technology. This is the blessing of higher energy prices.

I would also be OK with a large investment of federal money into R&D, though recent calls for the nationalization of oil refineries make me nervous. But I think if we come up with strategic and efficient ways of incentivizing universities and other corporate research centers, then a large public investment in energy would be called for.

We're in a bind. For the long term, renewable energy is the only answer. But we can't get from here to there quickly. We don't even know what "there" is. Both for the sake of national security (and independence) and economic vitality we have to use the traditional means we have for the short and medium term as we prepare for a world most of us will never see.

I remind myself that it is those countries that are economically strong that have the means to be environmentally protective. If our economy tanks people will do what they have to, just as people everywhere do, to get by. And that usually is very bad for our fellow creatures, for clean air and water, and for protective habitats.

Perhaps this is the chief irony of environmentalism; to have a clean world that is good for people and which offers safe haven for all God's creatures takes economic vitality. And yet, at some level, obtaining that economic vitality has an environmental cost.

In the end it is a necessary cost for the good of mankind and the health of the earth; it's just hard for someone with a heart for the earth's good to pull the trigger on oil drilling or nuclear power or other traditional means of obtaining energy.

I just think we have to, if we want to get from here, where we don't want to be, to there, which we can't even see.