Beware The Quick Fix Energy Solution

In the United States we are rapidly coming to the understanding that we must have energy independence as soon as possible. We have already seen our foreign policy hijacked because of dependence on oil from abroad and face an ever worsening trade deficit besides. As more and more third world countries are industrializing, their energy demands are putting upward price pressure on scarce resources.

None of this was unforeseen. But we lacked the political will to do much about it until the situation became urgent. Maybe some of the blame can be placed on oil industry lobbyists; maybe not. But the situation has become increasingly difficult to simply dismiss as "the pessimistic forecasts of the chronic doom sayers".

The fact that we need energy independence as soon as possible (if not yesterday) has increased the likelihood that we will make some bad choices. We want the quick fixes. But we need to take some time to think through the consequences of those fixes.

Some want us to move into greater use of coal and its derivative, coal oil. We can do that. The United States has vast quantities of coal. It has been said that the U.S. is to coal what Saudi Arabia is to oil. That would certainly make us energy independent, and we already have the technology. The problem is that it would be an environmental catastrophe.

Traditional coal mining (digging caves in the ground) is dangerous to the miners. Mountain top removal is ugly and pollutes our streams and rivers. Burning coal releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide along with other pollutants. When it comes to fuel sources, you can hardly get more carbon based than coal. We could use coal to almost completely solve the problem of reliance on foreign sources for our energy. But by doing so we could destroy our fresh water supplies and further pollute our air while simultaneously hastening global warming.

Corn farmers want us to do more with converting corn to ethanol. We already have the technology to do this. Since corn is grown, it is a renewable resource. Burning ethanol does release some carbon dioxide, but carbon dioxide is absorbed from the air by the corn plants themselves. So it sort of cleans up after itself and becomes the perfect solution, right? Wrong!

Corn is useful for an amazing number of things. So many, in fact, it is a waste to burn it up. If you walked through your local grocery store and removed everything that had corn or a corn derivative in it, you would find the shelves rather barren. If you took away animals raised on corn products, much of the meat, eggs, and dairy would disappear. Obviously, anything that increases our demand for corn is going to cause the cost of a lot of other things to rise.

There are also the fuel expenditures in raising corn and getting the ethanol to market. Furthermore, it would require all the suitable agricultural land in the U.S. just to grow enough corn to produce the amount of ethanol required to replace our need for gasoline and diesel. There would be no farmland for anything else. However, as we diminish our population through starvation, we would find our energy needs going down.

I have named the increased use of coal and corn based ethanol as but two examples of quick fixes. They are quick fixes because we possess the technology in a sufficiently developed state to implement these solutions now. There are others in this category.

Each solution has its supporters. Most of these are advocated by people with a personal economic interest in their adoption. They will emphasize the benefits and dismiss the problems. Beware the quick fix.

That's Wade's two cents.

Wade Houston
October 15, 2007