Gene Perry, a member of the Norman Sustainability Network, an organization which seeks to educate Oklahomans about conservation, said he is skeptical of claims that nuclear energy would be cheaper for Oklahomans, and he would rather see money put toward renewable energy resources in Oklahoma.

“One major problem is nuclear energy is sold as an alternative energy like wind and solar and it is not,” said Perry, who is a former Daily employee. “We have wind and lots of sun already in Oklahoma; we don’t have the resources for nuclear.”

Perry said although he is open to the idea of nuclear power, he would rather see money go to furthering the development of renewable resources than the development of a nuclear project that could potentially be sponsored by subsidies.

Read the rest.

Unfortunately, the Democrats, including Obama, are on the wrong side of this issue.  The Republicans oppose it, though their own ideas about opening up every wilderness area for drilling would be equally ineffective at reducing gas prices.

Our entire approach to energy policy is fundamentally childish.  Rather than face the difficult truth that gas is only going to get more expensive (even if production hasn’t peaked, demand from China and India will always be ready to swallow any increase in supply), they still pretend it’s just a matter of sweeping aside the greedy corporations or hippie environmentalists.

To survive in a time of expensive fossil fuels, we have to change our way of life.  The government could play a positive role here, by investing in mass transit infrastructure and promoting fuel-efficiency and denser city planning.  But it won’t happen if we waste all our breath yelling at scapegoats.

Some famous words by Carl Sagan come to mind:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

If environmental issues are more up your alley, the Norman Sustainability Network’s Web site has recently been redesigned in a blog format. If you want to get involved locally in environmental issues, NSN always welcomes new members. We are working on getting a team of bloggers to post there, leading up to the statewide Oklahoma Sustainability Network conference in March.

Also on the environment beat is Dot Earth, a new blog at the New York Times by veteran environment reporter Andrew Revkin. He’s also put together a narrated slideshow that he describes as “outlining the learning curve that drove me to focus my career, and this blog, on the evolving human relationship with the home planet and with one another.”

Today’s Our View tries to push back on the biofuels hype, but for all the wrong reasons. Oklahoma’s annual biofuels conference has its share of over-optimistic claims by energy and agriculture companies just looking to make money. They play up the benefits and downplay drawbacks of whatever pet technology has the spotlight at that moment. But just because any one technology may not be a cure all, that doesn’t mean biofuels won’t be a important part of where we get energy.

A claim in the Our View is that while switchgrass doesn’t directly compete with food like corn-based ethanol, it will indirectly do so because of farmers switching what they produce. But one reason switchgrass is so touted is that it will grow on poor soils unsuited for other crops. If grown mixed with other beneficial plants and rotated with nitrogen fixing crops such as legumes, it can be produced with a minimum of fertilizer and pesticides. All of these involve changes in many common farming practices, but that is the reason for a conference: to bring together the researchers, businesspeople, farmers, and politicians who all need to combine their efforts towards this goal.

The Our View’s description of the supply and demand of food production also greatly oversimplifies the picture. The biggest single factor on corn prices in the United States today is an absurd system of farm tariffs and subsidies. Big agriculture hasn’t been left to the whims of supply and demand in a long time, and if we didn’t provide unfair protection against crops from the developing world (like we insist they do with our designer drugs and Hollywood movies), then we would have plenty of cheap food for everyone and provide a boost to poor economies around the world.

Biofuels are part of the same dynamic. Brazil, the biggest producer of ethanol from sugarcane, can’t even find a market for its biofuels because of tariffs in the United States and European Union.

I don’t want to get too far into the biofuels weeds here. It’s obviously a very complicated subject. But it comes down to this: biofuels are one part of an overall strategy that will also include solar, wind, and possibly nuclear power sources, much improved energy conservation and efficiency, improvements in mass transit and denser living patterns, and so on and so forth. In that sense, it’s pointless to criticize one part among many for not answering all of our problems.

It’s not a magic bullet. But it’s a piece of the puzzle.

Photo by Flickr user bamakodaker used under a Creative Commons license.

The recent announcement that regulators nixed development of the Red Rock coal power plant is wonderful news. To understand why, see this ad (PDF) from Architecture 2030. Some excerpts:

Home Depot has funded the planting of 300,000 trees in cities across the US. Each tree will absorb and store about one-third of a ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) over its lifetime. In addition to the coal plants that already exist, there are now 151 new conventional coal-fired power plants in various stages of development in the US today. The CO2 emissions from only one medium-sized (500 MW) coal-fired power plant, in just 10 days of operation, would negate the Home Depot’s entire effort.

Wal-Mart, the largest “private” purchaser of electricity in the world is investing a half billion dollars to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their existing buildings by 20% over the next 7 years. “As one of the largest companies in the world, with an expanding global presence, environmental problems are our problems,” said CEO Lee Scott. The CO2 emissions from only one medium-sized coal-fired power plant, in just one month of operation each year, would negate Wal-Mart’s entire effort.

That isn’t to say these and other efforts don’t help. Energy conservation by both corporations and individuals means using less power, so we don’t need as many coal plants to begin with.

But it gives a sense of the scale of the problem. Coal plants provide half of American electricity. To truly reduce emissions, we need a huge overhaul of our energy infrastructure. It’s not impossible, but it requires serious effort. Right now we are not making that effort.

Thomas Friedman said it well in a recent speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival:

I am not a skeptic about global warming. It’s happening. I am a total skeptic that we are really doing anything about it. I think we are in the middle of a huge green bubble … You’ll pardon me when I hear people say, “We’re in the midst of a green revolution.” Oh, green revolution.

Did you ever study a revolution in history? You ever seen a revolution in history where nobody got hurt? That’s the green revolution. In the green revolution, nobody gets hurt—we’re all winners … Exxon’s green. They give $100 million to Stanford … Dick Cheney’s green. He’s for alternative fuels, yeah. He’s for liquefied coal. Dick Cheney’s green. We are all green now. Welcome to the green revolution, where nobody gets hurt.

… And that’s why we are having a green party, not a green revolution. Do not kid yourself for one second.

A recent Reuters article states:

Big oil companies did not conspire to raise U.S. gasoline prices last summer, as it was high crude oil costs and supply problems that caused the spike in pump prices, government investigators said on Thursday.

The Federal Trade Commission said that about 75 percent of the rise in gasoline prices was due to a seasonal increase in summer driving, higher oil costs and more expensive ethanol that was blended into gasoline.

The other 25 percent of the price increase stemmed from lower gasoline production as refiners moved to using ethanol as the main clean-burning fuel additive and lingering damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita that reduced refining capacity.

The truth is, gas prices are going to keep going up in both the near and far future. The long-term trends require it. It’s not simply that supply in the easiest to develop oil fields is reaching its limits. Demand is increasing everywhere too, spurred by the rapidly rising economies of China and India.

Even if there was a way to ensure a future of cheap gas, it would also ensure disaster for all life on this planet if we keep pumping carbon in the atmosphere at the rate we are today.

But again, I don’t blame the oil companies for doing what they were designed to do. That’s capitalism.

The real problem is a failure of regulation. While capitalism is a marvelous engine for moving societies to ever greater prosperity and growth, it is the job of our elected leaders and government agencies to step in where the market fails. They must take responsibility for the long-term quality of life issues and environmental consequences that are not considered in quarterly profit reports.

They are not doing their jobs.

According to the Washington Post, “The FTA has proposed spending about $1.4 billion on new transit projects next fiscal year, compared with $42 billion that states will receive for highway maintenance and construction”.

Sure, more people drive than ride mass transit, but how much of that is out of necessity instead of desire? If we spent more on transit, building new infrastructure and improving what we have, then more people would use it, especially with gas becoming ever more expensive. But if we underfund transit, people will be forced to drive, so the FTA can say no one is using transit, so they can … underfund it even more!

For a local example, the light rail tracks around the historic Union Station in Oklahoma City are being threatened by construction of a $360 million, ten lane expansion of I-40.

What about those places where population density is not high enough to support transit? Well, Congress hasn’t increased the CAFE standards that mandate auto fuel efficiency for 17 years.

Different energy bills passed in the Senate and House include some improvements, but it’s yet to be seen what will make it out of committee for the final bill. We need to put pressure on our government, both in Washington and locally, to do much more. If we don’t plan and advocate for a better future, then it is our fault too.

the car was interred with 10 gallons of gasoline, in case fuel would be obsolete in 2007

Photo by Flickr user garynoon1961 under a Creative Commons license.