From a new Rasmussen poll:
With energy issues taking center stage in the presidential campaign, 81% of Americans see development of new energy sources as an urgent priority. Only 9% disagree.
For nearly two-thirds (65%), finding new sources of energy is more important that reducing the amount of energy Americans now consume. Twenty-eight percent (28%) think reducing current usage is more important.
At the time President Kennedy announced the beginning of the Space Race, much of the fuel behind it was a belief that America was lagging behind the Soviet Union in science and math. To win the cold war, it was believed, required a massive investment in our tech infrastructure and the Apollo mission was the most visible outgrowth of that.
Video: Kennedy Apollo Speech
We are faced again with another crisis, with effects far more wide reaching than the gap with the Soviet Union ever turned out to be. We need fuel to make our economy grow and sustain our livelihood. At the same time, we need for that source of fuel to not have the side effects of leaving us beholden and in debt to despots and robber barons, while also not destroying the planet in the process.
I think that even in the middle of an economic crisis the American people are ready to invest in a serious mission to get off of oil and find a new energy source. We’ve spent decades now in the fairytale of belief that the oil companies are working on this issue. They likely spend more on commercials claiming that they’re working on alternatives than they actually are spending. They are focused on their bottom lines, their quarter to quarter profits (recently at record levels) and not on a long term solution that might have the added side effect of putting them out of business. It’s like expecting Horse & Buggy Inc. to invest in creating the internal combustion engine. Not going to happen.
At the same time, finding an alternative to oil is not a cheap mission, and not the sort of thing likely to be invested in by a startup or other private company. Like the audacious idea of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the earth, this is a job for the much derided government. Much like how the Internet evolved from a military research project into one of the greatest economic engines of all time for private industry, we have to put up the resources and get the best people working on this issue immediately.
WWII Plant Workers in Sylacauga, Alabama
Instead of empty slogans like “Drill now!” – a feel good bit of marketing whose best result is likely a few barrels of oil and a few more Exxon Valdez incidents – we need to do what America has a long history of doing well, mobilizing nationally against an oppressive force.
At the same time, we need for that source of fuel to not have the side effects of leaving us beholden and in debt to despots and robber barons
And here’s where you lost me. Profit is one of the greatest motivators known to mankind. People are working on it precisely because they think they are going to get filthy, stinking rich. If potential inventors know they are going to be demonized and taxed into oblivion, they’re going to be much less willing to work on the project. And that helps no one. Platitudes about “saving the Earth” are great and all, but this is reality, not a Rodenberryian utopia. People will be much more willing to invest if they know that investment will pay off … huge.
If that’s true, where’s the beef? No doubt there’s money in them thar hills, but it requires some capital and risk.
We have to provide incentives for “oil” companines to become “energy” companies in fact as well as in name, and, as Farris notes, to encourage new private initiatives. I imagine some combination of private/public activity is going to be required.
We also need to be willing to make a long-term committment and have as solid a vision as we can develop. Apollo was a huge success, but interest waned after the initial landings (at least as reflected by Congressional funding), and we never really had a good answer to “after the Moon, what?”
People will be much more willing to invest if they know that investment will pay off … huge.
Lord knows I’d be willing to invest if I knew my payoff would be huge. But since when do investors know beyond doubt that they’ve got a big payoff coming? Especially in a new (or newly important) industry?
Do we really need to promise that the lucky winners will become Henry Ford billionares before investors will be involved? I don’t think so.
I imagine some combination of private/public activity is going to be required.
Like both the internet and space program. People have made money in both, though for the latter it has been primarily universities.
and we never really had a good answer to “after the Moon, what?”
Drilling!
Conspiracy Theories aside, there has been hard work on post-oil technologies for at least three decades, with billions upon billions spent. The simple fact is that fossil fuels are too good of an energy source, and thus are difficult to replace. It’s not a lack of money or motivation which has kept non-fossil fuel alternatives off the market. It’s the fact they simply aren’t as good at delivering energy as oil, coal, and natural gas. No amount of hope and prayer changes the fact that solar cells don’t convert sunlight efficiently. No amount of government money makes wind blow off the California coast during the times people need it. No amount of tax subsidies for alternative energy development will make geothermal energy useful outside of Hawaii and Yellowstone.
sfc, that’s a losing, un-American philosophy. On the other hand, it IS the Republic party platform- “It can’t be done so why try?” Imagine if Thomas Edison or Henry Ford had your attitude.
I never said that developing a post-fossil fuel energy source can’t be done. I also never said it shouldn’t be tried. What I said was that the current slate of alternative energy sources are not capable of meeting the requirements. The only currently available alternative which can meet our current requirements is nuclear power. And that has a lifespan similar to oil in that there is only so much uranium oxide which is useful for power generation.
Mr. Willis’ analogy to relying on the oil companies to develop the next energy source being similar to Horse and Buggy Inc developing the car is also fundamentally flawed. It wasn’t a massive government program which developed the auto mobile. A whole slew of talented individuals working independently and driven by the profit motive developed what we now know as the automobile. There was no requirement to have the government fund such development.
And EL, as far as a Republican platform of “It can’t be done so why try?”, is that at all similar to the apparent Democratic platform of “We can do it, but it won’t make an immediate impact so why try?” as regards to increasing our supply of oil or our ability to refine what we do have? I know I’m stealing from Leno when I say it, but we sure could use that oil it would have taken 10 years to get on the market if Clinton had authorized drilling in ANWR back in 1995.