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Highlands Today

Low Gas Prices Doesn't Diminish Our Need For Energy Independence

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 26, 2008

It's amazing how quickly people resume old practices when gas prices drop. Everyone is enjoying much lower gas prices than just a month ago, but we should not forget that this turns on a dime, and our country's top priority - short of stabilizing our economy - is to become self-reliant when it comes to energy.

Energy will be our biggest issue in the coming century as we reconstruct just about everything about how we heat and cool our homes, and fuel our transportation. There's no doubt that we need to drill oil reserves, tap our natural gas, build wind turbines, construct nuclear power plants and devise clean coal technology. And we need to do this as environmentally friendly as possible.

Sen. John McCain is correct that we need nuclear power plant construction across our country. And Sen. Barack Obama is correct that we must have a safe way to dispose of nuclear waste. So what's the problem? The only reason we don't have safe disposal is because no one wants it in their backyard. Tough. We can have safe, effective storage facilities everywhere there will be plants. Make it a law.

As for coal, our nation is rich in the black stuff. And we're not talking about ripping mountains to shreds in West Virginia and endangering underground miners. In Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas lies 800 billion tons of coal just waiting to be mined. It's located in some of the most remote, barren, sage brush high desert in America. It's close to the surface and easily accessed without tunneling. The problem is, it's dirty coal compared to Eastern coal.

Western coal is cheap and plentiful, but it also has a higher sulfur content and less BTUs. Eastern coal is harder to get to, more dangerous, but cleaner burning and higher BTU. All methods of burning coal are harmful to the environment, but we can find a way to eliminate most of those problems.

Coal gasification and other clean-coal technology exists, and scrubbers can be mounted on coal-fired electrical plants to greatly reduce emissions. They are expensive, but much of the technology is there. We just have to have the backbone to do it. Now's that time.

Natural gas is abundant, and some biofuels - but not all biofuels - hold real promise.

All of these are just temporary fixes until we figure out wind and solar sources for energy. That's where the future of the world is found, and we must make it lucrative for innovation to find a way to harvest this clean energy.

Let's not let lower gas prices cause us to take our eyes off the prize. We must quit sending our energy dollars to other places. We cannot be at their mercy, and our national security depends on it.

This is important stuff and all Americans must get behind this in every way possible.

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