Energy Conservation and Energy Policy
July 4th, 2010 |
Every few years or so energy conservation seems to come up on the radar as one of the possible planks in a national energy policy of the US. And it sounds so romantic and laudable that we all feel guilty for not doing it.
Only a few days ago, on the day President Obama was to give a speech on energy policy after touring the oil spill disaster in the Golf, Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe suggested that this could very well be a starting point as it is something we can do immediately. That sounds like such a great idea, until you think about it a bit.
As a personal initiative energy conservation of course is a great idea. But as far as a national energy policy goes, I wouldn’t even consider it as among my top five options. Sure you can have a program that encourages conservation in certain respects, but a policy?
First, let us stop pretending that conservation is even something that we really want to do on a large scale, because really Americans are just not into that. And who can blame them. What are we to do, cut down on our movie going, or little league games, or watching football. I don’t think so.
Conserving energy means less activity. And less activity in the US most likely means less economic activity.
The issue of course is not that we use energy. And I am not talking about wasting energy, because that is a completely different matter. I am talking about expecting people to stop living just so that we do not use up more energy.
The real issue is the type of energy we consume, what are the consequences, what effects it has on other aspects of our lives such as our environment and our health and our standard of living. That is the main issue. That is what we need to formulate an energy policy around.
Fossil fuels of course have served us good and long and still remain relatively cheap. But energy goes broad and deep as far as our economy is concerned that it seems to me here is an opportunity to make a pivot away from fossil fuels, a large part of which is controlled by others.
I am no economist but I would think that as we move towards maybe a bit more expensive but renewable or cleaner energy sources in the transition period, then energy from fossil fuels should get cheaper. So net-net the transitions costs for industry may not be that prohibitive as some would have us believe.
Energy use has too much import in the scheme of things for us to be going back to old romantic but infeasible approaches such as conservation. At a personal level that is an ok decision. But as national policy, it is really a bit naive.
About The Author:
Yorlig Elkims is the social conscious pen name for G. W. Smikle.
Tired of the usual run of the mill stuff, regurgitations, agenda bolstering foolishness and intellectual dishonesty associated with most of our social and political discussion, he vents and opines at http://yorlig.com which allows him to maintain some level of sanity. Visit him to see what comes out of this saner side of his head.
