Jan 8, 2008

An Energetic Resolution for the Coming Year

It’s a great year to make New Year’s resolutions.

Elections are coming this fall, and from the amount and earliness of the political activity, everybody seems to be getting primed to cast a few important votes come November. It’s like having almost a whole year to decide what your resolutions are going to be.

I take resolutions seriously. I believe individual decisions, carefully thought out and implemented, can have larger effects because they become models for the actions of others.

While I intend to cast my votes carefully this fall, I’m not waiting to get started. My resolution for this year is to seriously begin to face up to $100-a-barrel oil and find ways to reduce its effects on my pocketbook and my environment.

I’ve always thought the environment is more important than my pocketbook, and I am concerned about the role I’ve played over the years in worsening it. I’m convinced that combusting fossil fuels has caused and is causing global warming and the bad effects associated with it. I’m sorry for my part in that. There’s no doubt that I rely on fossil fuels for many things.

I have done some things to try to reduce that. I have a corn-burning furnace in my home that has cut my use of LP gas about 75 percent. This is my third winter with it and, of course, corn has more than doubled in price. But the principle is sound, and the price is still favorable.

This year, I plan to buy a car that will get about twice the gas mileage of the one I now drive.

As an avid gardener, I eat about as local as any person I know.

Beyond that, I’m somewhat stumped. Should I bicycle to work? Should I move so I can drive less? Should I put solar panels on the roof or a windmill in the yard?

It’s harder to actually implement effective choices than it is to advocate for them. Luckily, I am in a position where advocacy does count, and in that sense I, like others, will postpone decisions and try to affect energy policy by voting in November.

This is hard to do. While I think our country’s energy policy (and lack thereof) is the most important issue of the day, the political candidates don’t seem to agree. They are dwelling on what are, to me, very unimportant issues involving what should be the private behavior of others.

When candidates do address energy-related issues, it is to utter platitudes that cater to some constituency rather than addressing the real problems.

As much as I disdain George Bush, he has been right on one energy issue: the role nuclear (which he can’t pronounce) energy must play in the future. About a fifth of our electric power is generated by nuclear energy now, and that should be raised to nearly 100 percent – maybe more.

How do we get more than 100 percent? By shifting toward greater application of electric power in hybrid automobiles and public transport and in home heating. Nobody seems to question the brilliance of Albert Einstein, but they get scared to death of what he discovered. E=MC2 is the most important formula ever discovered and it is fundamental to our energy future. Nuclear energy emits no carbon and is clean. Nuclear plants are not nuclear bombs. It is time to get over our fear of them.

One big question now is whether we should shift to “clean coal.” Coal, like oil, can’t be made “clean,” if by that we mean reducing carbon dioxide. They are exactly equal. The issue is price. Would it make sense to shift from oil, where we are dependent on foreign supplies, to coal, which we have in abundance?

As a person involved in agriculture, I firmly believe in the maximum use of plants to capture sunlight energy, and I find it amazing that so much land is not used. So far, farmers are pushing for the worst choice, corn, which is dependent on energy-laden inputs for its production. Moreover, my corn furnace would need 50 percent more corn if it were turned into ethanol first. The fermentation of corn produces as much carbon dioxide as it does alcohol.

I am amazed at the little effort directed toward harvesting the annual production of wood from forestlands. In Europe, forests are managed and look like parks, as wood is collected for fuel and trees are managed for timber. In this country, huge forces are at work to stop the “invasion” of “wilderness,” where wood is produced and left to rot or become fuel for forest fires.

In Michigan, half the land is forested, and much of it is covered with low-value trees. We could make an industry here with wood chippers and a policy of eliminating box elders and dead elms wherever we find them. Some of that is being done, as wood chips are now used for making composite lumber and for fueling conventional electric generation plants.

What we need are political candidates who will to commit themselves to the mission of ruthlessly eliminating the use of fossil fuels by whatever means work in whatever the situation provides. If it’s hot and dry, collect sunlight with solar cells. If it’s cold and windy, collect wind energy. If it’s wet, collect energy from waves and from heat in water itself. If it’s at the edge of a tectonic plate, capture thermal energy. Advocate policies that make the best use of land to produce usable, renewable energy.

Let’s manage. Let’s farm. Let’s harvest. Let’s choose. Let’s pursue ideas. Let’s give up bad habits.

Resolved: Replace oil by whatever means work as speedily as a transition can be achieved by honest effort.