Buck Up, America

This week's newspaper column: (Read it in the Hattiesburg American.)

“If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, either way, you’re right.”

Attributed to Henry Ford, this is one of my favorite quotes, and it’s especially applicable to the current debate over fossil fuels and renewable energies.

Voices arguing against moving away from traditional dirty energies – most notably oil, gas, and coal – in the direction of clean energies proclaim that running America on renewable energy is a pipe dream, a fantasy – “pie in the sky!"

But I ask you: Whatever happened to that good old American “can do” spirit?

True, Henry Ford took a lot of ribbing for his idea of bringing horseless carriages to the mass market. (The buggy whip manufacturers were especially skeptical.) “What a silly idea,” they said. “Who would want to ride around in one of those things? They’re too expensive. They’re ugly. There are not enough roads to handle automobiles. They can’t possibly work for everybody. Pie in the sky!”

But we got over it, and by the mid-twentieth century, the automobile had transitioned from pipe dream to the American dream. And the buggy whip manufacturers somehow managed to make the transition too.

And now look at us arguing against our own ingenuity once again. This time, it’s not horseless carriages taking the brunt of the mocking criticism, it’s solar panels and wind turbines and alternative energy technologies we’ve only begun to explore. I don’t believe for a moment that we, as a society, are incapable of transitioning to clean energies; it’s simply a matter of will.

The vision of a clean-running America may very well be out of reach for those who close their minds off to the infinite creative possibilities lying ahead of us. But American innovation can only be throttled for so long. Eventually, either we advance as a nation, or we’ll be leapfrogged by the rest of the world. China, with its substantial investment in renewable energies, sustainable cities, and high-speed rail is on the verge of doing just that.

But everybody isn’t quite as down on renewable energies as are the current crop of nay-saying politicians and oil men. Right now, all across the US, in garages and labs, innovators and entrepreneurs are positioning themselves to be the next Henry Ford – this time, in the area of renewable clean energy.

That’s why I’m optimistic about the future of renewable energy. That’s why, regardless of all the negative talk, regardless of all the “here’s why we can’t” diatribes, this country is about to go through a fundamental revolution in the way we produce and use energy, and we’ll all be better off.

Years from now, our children will look back and wonder why we put it off for so long.

More Renewable Energy Fair...

Architect Lou Host-Jablonski demonstrates techniques of straw-clay construction.

Energy Fair

More photos from the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's Energy Fair.

Renewable Energy Fair

Just back from Wisconsin where, among other things, I attended the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's annual Energy Fair.

Over the next few days I'll be posting photos of the event.

This year, over 23,000 people attended the event from across the globe. 270 vendors displaying a variety of renewable energy-related products and services, and more than 200 seminars and workshops disseminated renewable energy information galore.

I was ably assisted (at least on the first day) by my good friends Robert Godfrey and Jeff Havens - "A-list" charter members of the Green Technology Team.

Stay tuned...

Midwest Renewable Energy Fair

The newspaper column:

This week, I am reporting from the Midwest Renewable Energy Association’s Energy Fair. Every year, practitioners and manufacturers of renewable energy systems from all over the country (and across the globe) come together in Custer, Wisconsin to share ideas about renewable energy.

Renewable energy, broadly defined, involves using the reoccurring and regenerative forces of Nature to power our world. Solar and Wind are the Brad and Angelina of the genre, but any element of green building, energy conservation, clean energy generation, or renewable energy advocacy is fair game at this Fair.

A tall, slender windmill announces the entry to the site. Most people come by car – after all, it’s a rural destination – but there were plenty of bicycles around and a bus stop for arranged public transportation.

White tents house make-shift classrooms where seminars and lectures on anything renewable take place throughout the three day event - over 200 sessions in all.

Exhibitors display the latest technologies in renewable energies and services with experts to answer specific questions about real world applications. Component samples, mock-ups, and ample product literature (to which an English major might raise an eyebrow and mutter “you call this literature?”) provide a dizzying avalanche of useful information for renewable newbies and pros alike.

Workshops led by pioneering experts demonstrate straw bale construction techniques and the ins and outs of erecting and operating solar energy systems.

On display at the Clean Energy Car Show are new electric vehicles, conventional vehicles converted to electric or hybrid operation, and even a solar powered bicycle.

Children can get into the act too. There’s a dedicated “Rainbow’s End” area for play and age-appropriate workshops on wind power, photosynthesis, and a host of other diverse learning activities disguised as fun and games. Kids can even assemble photon racers – or solar powered model cars – and race them.

Without a doubt, there is much more information at this fair than is possible to imbibe in a too-short period of time, even for renewable energy wonks. The best strategy at an event like this is take names and notes and follow up later. But the inevitable and necessary conversation does transpire, naturally.

The Internet is great, but face to face contact has always been, and will always be a very sustainable way to communicate. There is no equal substitute for a conversation in the flesh. Beyond the intricacies of technology and commerce, we are - after all - all human beings sharing a common planet.

For the health and well-being of humanity and the world in which we live, it is for the good of us all that people get together periodically and share ideas about how we can manifest and maintain a clean, prosperous, and peaceful living environment.

That is the spirit of this gathering.

Tripple Word Score

This week's newspaper article:

Debate over the national stimulus plan is coming to a head. The proposal - yet to be passed by both bodies of Congress and signed into law by the President – stands as a combination of tax cuts and funding for projects designed to create jobs.

Tax cuts are a foregone conclusion; we can all use a few extra dollars in our pockets.

But some, singing the tired old song that “the best government is the least government,” have suggested that any attempt to stimulate the economy through job creation at the federal level is destined to fail. They say that any money spent on job creation by the federal government is just throwing money away. Thus, the remedy for an ailing national economy involves permanent tax cuts. Period.

In other words, “more of the same, only more of it.” Those people must be terrible Scrabble players.

In the classic board game, the way to score big is by targeting the bonus squares and creating as many words as possible in as many directions as possible in one move.

Scrabble is a two dimensional game. Looking for opportunities to make a play that is both sideways and up-and-down is a winning strategy. Thinking one-dimensionally, meaning every word stands alone, puts a cap on the effectiveness, and almost always results in the bottom end of the score.

Let’s look at a couple of the proposals at play.

The plan calls for weatherizing millions of homes, putting Americans to work in every part of the nation. These jobs, unlike many over the past few years, cannot be outsourced to China.

The bonus? Buildings suck up almost half the energy we use in this country. Inefficient buildings are the worst culprits. Once weatherized, homeowners save money each month on their energy bills (adding up to a tidy sum by the end of the year), and the country is less dependent on dirty and foreign sources of energy.

The proposed stimulus package calls for the construction of the first phase of a national energy “smart grid.” Just like the railroads of the nineteenth century, the interstate highways of the mid-twentieth century, and the Internet of late, this new infrastructure will foster millions of well-paying jobs for decades to come.

The added dimension? Once the smart grid is in place, homegrown renewable energy can be transported from renewable hotspots –wind in the Midwest, solar in the Southeast – all across the country resulting in permanent American jobs, energy security, a clean environment, and lower energy costs for all Americans.

When government proposals are one-dimensional, they may very well be destined for failure. But all of the major proposals by the Administration have multiple dividends, and once accomplished, serve a valuable purpose well into the future.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect President Obama is a very good Scrabble player.

Arnold Flexes Environmental Muscle

Arnold Schwarzenegger is no poser. The California governor has been aggressively exercising the Golden State's right to address climate change.

Efforts to raise the bar on auto emission standards beyond the meager standards set by the federal government met with opposition from the former Bush administration, but President Obama recently ordered a review of that policy opening the way for its implementation.

The PBS program NOVA, in a program entitled The Big Energy Gamble, takes a look at California's sustainability agenda and ponders the question, "Will the US will follow?"

Brother, Can You Paradigm?

This week's newspaper article:

What’s all the fuss about renewable energy? And what is renewable energy anyway?

We can start with some definitions.

Renewable energies are energy sources that naturally self-replenish into perpetuity without harm to the planet’s ecosystem, and they give off no toxic byproducts in the course of their capture or usage. Let’s call this clean energy.

Non-renewable energy is characterized as being derived from a finite earth element such as coal or oil - probably extracted from the earth at the expense of the ecosystem. These resources are generally messy to extract, and produce toxic waste that humans must clean up or somehow sweep under the rug. Let’s call these dirty energies.

The sun and wind are pure examples of renewable energy; neither must be “extracted” and they don’t pollute.

But what about clean coal? Is that renewable?

Not so much.

Coal - now popularly characterized by the industry as “clean coal” - does not replenish itself. We could bury more dinosaurs (if there were any left around) and wait for a few million years to get another several decades of energy, but that’s not what I call sustainable. And so-called clean coal technology may emit fewer toxins than your grandfather’s coal plant, but toxins are emitted nonetheless, albeit in smaller quantities.

Meanwhile, the coal-burning process creates millions of tons of toxic waste.

Recently in Tennessee, almost two million cubic yards of fly ash - a byproduct of coal incineration containing toxic heavy metals - broke through an earthen dam spilling onto hundreds of acres before making its way into a tributary of the Tennessee River polluting the drinking water source for millions downstream.

That’s the great risk of dirty energy.

Proponents of clean coal will argue that being less bad is good. Is it?

Consider this. If you’re driving to New York, but you’re headed in the direction of Los Angeles, will driving slower ever get you where you want to go?

Scientists expect the sun to pump life-giving rays to our planet for billions of years before it dies out. And wind will be around as long as we remember not to blow up the planet.

Contrast that to projections for dirty energies, which tend to be predicted in denominations of years or decades.

Decades versus billions of years? Imagining that comparison on a graph, the clean energy line would be off the page and the dirty energy line would be a tiny, tiny blip.

Moving as fast as possible to implement renewable energy is a progressive AND a conservative approach. Conversion from dirty to clean energy will create home-grown jobs and will result in greater security and predictability in our energy markets. The idea of renewable energy is not left or right, it is decidedly forward.

Staying with the current system - one that will run out of gas, so to speak, within the lifetime of our grandchildren - is a truly radical approach.