Much Demagoguery Shapes the Whole Energy Scene

To The Editor:
Most industrial nations like ours are energy intensive. Our economy and daily lives depend on various forms of it supplied from numerous sources. But global economics, environmental imperatives, conservation issues, politics and sadly, much demagoguery shape the whole energy scene.
Surely meeting energy needs can be risky, as the ongoing Gulf calamity proves; potentially the environmental disaster of the age. There is also the loss of life of coal miners this year. The Gulf tragedy has already impacted our quest for more oil by off shore drilling, as the president called for a six-month moratorium. This event certainly boosts environmentalists’ warnings, which range from cautions to demands for Draconian changes in our way of life. Green is keen!
What are our options? There’s natural gas, cleaner, but not clean enough for some. Coal, which we have in abundance, and though cleaner than decades ago, some protest, “There is no such thing as clean coal!”
Greens tout renewable energy from solar and wind. But at the current, or likely any future state of technology, those cannot provide for our bulk energy demands, coming largely from coal. Recent estimates suggest 20 percent of our needs may some day come from solar and wind. Then there’s the hassle of resolving transmission issues: getting the energy from where it’s produced to where it’s needed on the grid. There is hydrogen/oxygen fuel-cell technology, far from ready for consumers and well behind wind and solar in practice except for NASA space applications.
About the only source robust and “green” enough is nuclear, for now. But it’s burdened with spent-fuel problems and out-of-date scary China syndrome worries. Even so, it would take years to ramp-up new nuke plants. Like it or not, we’ll need to depend on fossil fuels for some time to come. Government schemes like “Cap and Trade” would be economic disaster (Obama: energy costs would sky-rocket) and diminish our global competitiveness.
Carbon crazies would have us all driving electric cars, but where would all the energy come from to charge our “green” car’s batteries (replacing the many millions of gasoline gallons we now use?) This would only add to our bulk electrical-energy demand. Energy alternatives will come in time, but we can’t go cold turkey, abandoning our present mainstays.
I hope some compelling experts on energy will speak out…ones not connected to the environmental movement or politics. They might take us from our energy fantasyland (no wonderland) to reality. Our current energy policies are dangerous and will make us less, not more energy independent and competitive. More aimed at increasing political power and government reach, than national well-being.
BOB LOVELL
Court House