What Does Energy Independence Really Mean?

Answering the question of what is true energy independence is the most critical one to get right in this nation’s history

The next big journey for the green movement will no longer be on an individual level. Instead it has to be on a national and international level. It is only when we see how encompassing and profound our environmental policies are on every facet of our lives that we begin to see the need for a broader approach. It is the end of what I can do and the era of what we can do.

The environmental movement, under green patriotism, is on the verge of becoming the way that we see the world and it must have a profound influence on how we govern our quest for energy independence. The fundamental question America faces is not whether we want to be energy independent, for certainly there is near unanimous agreement on this. The real issue is how we define energy independence.

I know that the other day when I interviewed Vince Haley, coauthor of Drill Here Drill Now Pay Less at Green Patriot Radio, he must have felt ambushed since I immediately went on the attack. I could have done a more nuanced job but I went right in. I did this because I think how we define energy independence is the most critical issue of our time.

In its definition is our pathway to winning the war on terror and addressing global climate change or, alternatively, not winning the war on terror and not addressing global climate change.

Vince and his coauthor Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the house, define energy independence largely as opening up vast more tracts of oil lands. They deal with solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable forms merely as decoration. Nuclear, they say, is carbon neutral when everybody knows that the concrete manufacture is one of the globe’s biggest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions and that nuclear plants are among the world’s biggest users of concrete. So yes, I attacked and attack I must for what I pose is just and if I don’t attack then our pathway to an energy-secure future will turn to rust.

We will not address the global war on terror or climate change with a policy based on the type of proportions Haley and Gingrich advocate. We will address more issues and create more jobs when we make transcending fossil fuels our number one priority. This is the wise course that Thomas L. Friedman, Paul Hawken, Joel Makower and others realize is the key solution because it creates real energy independence.

In today’s real world, there is no such thing as energy independence if China and India continue to gobble up all of the world’s oil supplies, not to mention the growing needs of Indonesia and Japan needing oil from Iran and the Middle East and Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas and oil. That is a recipe for conflagration and power plays that will involve America or its allies. It is far better to take on the job of creating nano-diodes that can capture and magnify solar power to a much greater degree than ever before, of building a better battery for electric plug-in vehicles, perfecting thin film solar panels, learning to store wind energy, building better carbon neutral diesel train engines and selling electric cars than it is to think that we can continue on with our heavy oil dependency without consequences for our economy and the specter of resource wars fought over oil.

If it wasn’t a first cause as presented to the American people, clearly, the strategic importance of Iraqi oil was, nonetheless, part and parcel of our high interest in deposing Saddam Hussein. China and India-instead of encouraging their oil addictions-the world ought to be handing them some tough love and tell them to stop cold turkey and go on the green path.

We in the West will license the technologies to produce power without oil just as NatureWorks LLC (part of Cargill) will be licensing its corn to polymer technologies throughout the world, though it was perfected in Blair, Nebraska, in the heart of Washington County not far from Council Bluffs where Lewis and Clark decamped. And by the way, we want higher environmental standards on you as well, China.  Do you see how we must impose higher environmental standards on ourselves and the world in order to protect ourselves, or do you want melamine in your baby formula?

The world should be outraged at China. The world should stop China from its addiction and force it to sign onto Kyoto or something even more stringent. We don’t know a lot of things about global warming and we can argue endlessly or we can do what any prudent people would do and that is act prudently, with a tendency to prevention, especially when we see that the prevention leads to economic health and diversified wealth via more jobs and new innovations and markets, that it can help quell international tensions, deprive terrorist-supporting governments of petro blood dollars, and ultimately create true energy independence.

Be sure to listen to David Steinman’s radio program here at Ecology Radio or at WebTalk Radio. To learn more about becoming a Green Patriot visit www.greenpatriot.us. You can also subscribe to this column via RSS.