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Highlands Today

Energy Independence Lies In The Far Horizon

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Randy Ludacer

Published: June 12, 2008

With the price at the pump rising past four dollars a gallon and no end in sight, everyone's favorite "Gee I wish" is for cheaper gas prices. This is surely to be desired. Regretfully, relief is more of an illusion than an achievable reality, especially in the short run. Since it is about to be dragged into the presidential campaign, it might be useful to examine a few unpleasant aspects of the reality.

To the man on the street, the dream of energy independence has been equated to gasoline cheap enough for him to continue to operate his gas hog, 12-miles-to-the-gallon SUV into the future.

The underlying assumption is that if we could pump prodigious quantities of crude off shore and in Alaska and keep it for domestic consumption exclusively, then surely the price of gasoline would come down.

The first overlooked reality is that we are part of a world market in petroleum, and that barrel of U.S. oil has the same value on the world market as a barrel produced in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria or the North Sea.

The second, overlooked reality is that were we able to produce such a quantity of crude, it will be the property of the oil company that discovered and produced it.

Far from being willing to sell it at a price substantially below world market to make the guy with the SUV happy, it will simply become part of the world supply, available to the highest bidder.

Looking to our politicians to provide us with a quick fix at the pump will prove to be another version of the "emperor's new clothes." Of course, we have had sham issues injected into our political contests before but this one is especially cruel. To provide a political solution for a quick fix at the gas pump would require a complete reversal of our free enterprise system, a nationalizing of our domestic oil supply, (a seizure) and withdrawal from the world economy. Not very likely, or very desirable.

Neither are bio fuels going to be the answer. Corn ethanol has proven to be a boondoggle. In addition, the amount of petroleum fuel consumed in ethanol production has so far proved to be a wasteful process. Cheaper bio fuel, produced from agricultural waste, is still unproved. Meanwhile, displacing food crops for fuel crops will create a worldwide disaster with resultant food shortages and increased prices for foodstuffs.

Real energy independence means being weaned from dependence on petroleum, will require patience and massive capital expenditures.

With the sun as an inexhaustible source of energy, solar energy will be part of the solution but getting there will be costly in terms of needed capital investment. Similarly with wind power and tidal energy, free energy sources will be part of the answer.

Nuclear energy is also part of the solution. Once we get over our Chernobyl and Three Mile Island jitters, and improve the technology for waste disposal, this too becomes part of the answer. France now derives 80 percent of its electrical power from nuclear energy.

So it seems that much of the answer is long term and meanwhile we will have to learn to suck it up, do without and find viable alternatives, do away with the hippopotamus of the highway –– the overweight, inefficient SUV –– and opt for lighter, more efficient cars.

Incremental increases in mileage efficiency, promised over the next 10 years wont help. We must immediately start rebuilding the public transportation network which we abandoned for the luxury of private cars, a luxury which is rapidly becoming unaffordable for most of us.

Hard times ahead, yes, but surely American ingenuity and courage have faced up to hard times before and we have survived.

Randy Ludacer lives in Lake Placid

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