The Blog » Energy Politics & Policy

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about a potential federal stimulus package that will rival President Eisenhower’s massive investments in highway infrastructure during the 1950s. The Interstate Highway System (read an interesting viewpoint on the highway system here) from that era launched America into living model that is economically and environmentally unsustainable; we’re finally finding that out now. During the 50s and 60s, middle class Americans fled urban centers and flocked to rural farmland areas to live in single family homes accessible only by automobile.

Remember when you were a little kid, watching t.v. with your parents and asking, “Daddy, what does coal do?” And he goes, “Well son, just watch the advertisement during the next commercial break, paid for by the coal lobbyist group.”

Me neither; maybe it’s because I grew up without t.v., or maybe it’s because these ads NEVER EXISTED BEFORE!

The psychological barrier of 100 dollars has now been broken in the other direction; heading downward. In early July, the price of crude oil flirted with 150 dollars per barrel, and yet a few years ago the idea of 100 dollar per barrel for oil was unfathomable. For me, the reasons behind this decrease are fairly obvious. Most of the western world is in the midst of a giant economic tail spin. The world market at large is going through a correction phase.

The lazy days of summer have done quite a bit to bring attention to America’s energy problems. We’ve had heat waves that require us to turn out our pockets and foot the huge bill for air conditioning; we’ve realized that our annual 4^th of July trip to Lake George is no longer affordable because of gas prices. And we’ve been bombarded from all directions by the presidential candidates about all the myriad ways they hope to take the strain of high energy prices off of us.

Here are some thoughts that came to my mind when reading this article. Most of what I am saying does not have to do with exports but rather popular topics in the news today. The alternative energy/ sustainability movement is unlike anything the United States has seen since WWII. Instead of blue collar jobs we will have “green collar jobs”.

Some of you may have noticed some very negative news articles in the New York Times regarding wind power developments in northern New York State. There are quite a few topics for discussion among these articles, and if you don’t mind, we’re going to break them up into multiple posts to do justice to each issue. For this post I’d like to focus on what I like to call the ‘Green-Rush,’ similar in many ways to the American gold rush and almost identical to another rush much less spoken about but oh so much more applicable, the American rush for oil at the beginning of the last century.

Click for the video:

T. Boone Pickens has spent at least $10M on an advertising campaign, which aims to educate Americans on the current energy crisis and our reliance on foreign borne oil. Pickens believes over 25% of our electricity demand can come from wind energy in the Midwest alone. The Pickens Plan aims at reducing and eventually eliminating our oil imports by replacing our reliance on oil for transportation and electricity with alternative energy technology. This advertisement is currently running on all cable networks:

When President George Bush calls to repeal a 27 year-old ban on oil exploration in coastal waters surrounding the US, both law-makers and the American public need to take one step back and benefit from an oft’ forgotten virtue, perspective.