Fixing global energy crisis requires gigantic steps

By Bill McCamley

“The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke

Change. It is an easy thing to talk about. Our society holds the concept up high. Words like audacity, courage and vision are used to bestow praise. Yet change is a hard thing for most to accept when actually presented. Why? Because humans are comfortable with stability. It makes us feel safe because we always know what we are dealing with. Any change, no matter how pleasant sounding, involves risk, and something risky can turn out well, but may also mean failure.

That means that most change (in our families, our businesses, our governments) happens slowly. In fact, the framers of our Constitution designed a government that was meant to move at the pace of a turtle. A bi-cameral legislature. Checks and balances between governmental branches. The innate conflict that a federal system drives between the central government and individual states. All were deliberately constructed so that proposals for change would have to run a gauntlet of challenges, so that when the change happened it would be thought-out, moderate and incremental. This usually means that as we change gradually as a society, our policies change at about the same pace.

Sometimes, though, incremental change just isn’t good enough. In these times, it is our responsibility to put aside our fear of change and embrace doing something bold that challenges our stability. These situations require leadership, but they also require that all of us do our part in transforming our community so that we can live better.

There are numerous examples in U.S. history when people set lofty goals to fix situations that were not good for us. Take the audacity of Susan B. Anthony and other suffragists in obtaining the right of women to vote, the courage of FDR in saving the U.S. economy during the Great Depression with the New Deal, the vision of Kennedy when he declared that a person would walk on the moon within 10 years and the nerve of Reagan to win the Cold War by outspending the Eastern Block. All of these proposals were met with skepticism when they were presented.

To succeed, all required a leader with the tenacity, not only to propose, but also to implement, these changes. However, all required that normal, everyday people did their part. Because everyone did, these examples are universally considered triumphs today.

A new challenge

A new challenge has risen that necessitates something more daring than incremental change: the global energy crisis. If we do not take gigantic steps to fix it soon, the consequences will be dire.

The first problem in this overall dilemma is our economy. $4.00/gallon gasoline makes every family face tough choices about what they can afford. The effects don’t end individually, however, because transporting every good requires fuel and most goods in our economy require transportation. When fuel prices go up, so do prices for everything. With our dependence on petrochemicals, oil companies are doing well, but everybody else is suffering.

Of course, we are not just talking about our dependence on oil, but on foreign oil. When we pay piles of money for every tank of gas, we hand resources to countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, not exactly countries with foreign policies we support. Even billionaire American oilman T. Boone Pickens has recently started touting domestic alternative energy, declaring that, “Anything we do is cheap compared to what we pay out for foreign oil,” and “We are very close to a disaster for this country and we have to move as fast as we can.”

The problem with fossil-fuel use is bigger than short-term economic problems. Global warming is real, we are causing it, and it is resulting in the polar ice caps melting and ocean levels rising. Since more than half of the world’s population (3.2 billion people) lives within 120 miles of a coast, the effect of these people being forced to move on the rest of civilization could be catastrophic. Imagine Hurricane Katrina magnified by 300,000 or so. Think this is only possible in some Hollywood movie? Think again. The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a 2-meter (6.5-feet) rise in ocean levels during this century.

The responsibility rests on us all

The responsibility to fix this situation rests on us all. Al Gore has started the discussion with a plan to be carbon neutral by 2018. The next president and Congress must create this plan or something similar and follow through on it by implementing laws that increase power levels through non-carbon emitting means (including wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear power) and reward more efficient use of the power we do produce. They must also work harder to negotiate with other countries (like China) to decrease reliance on coal to provide power.

Imagine if we would’ve started this process 30 years ago when people were waiting in lines to get gas. We failed, though, because we didn’t make the necessary sacrifices to accomplish a courageous vision that will give all of us a better chance to lead quality lives. It is our responsibility to do better.

McCamley is the District 5 Doña Ana County commissioner.