Who Are the American Energy Enemies?

For our purposes, the “enemy” is anyone or anything that delays the conversion of the World’s energy usage from dirty and polluting to clean and life-supporting. That, of course includes a lot of American commercial entities that hire a great number of people. But it also includes a lot of honest but uninformed citizens.

The Oil & Gas Industry employs 1,838,000 people. It also claims that there are 4,066,000 indirect jobs created by the oil and natural gas industry. This latter amount could be transferred to other energy sources.

Coal employs maybe 40,000 miners and a large number of indirect jobs; rail and other forms of delivery; not to mention attempts to “clean” the product.

But, according to a recent New York Times article, “Oil Giants Loath to follow Obama’s Green Lead.” Both Royal Dutch Shell and BP have been giving up their efforts to develop clean renewable energy and refocus on the cleaner, if possible, petroleum products such as ‘biofuels.’

Their main and brutally strong argument is that if the oil and coal industries are “shut down” literally millions of Americans will be put out of work.

The deliberate effort to use fear, even terror, especially in the current financial situation, includes a major effort to denigrate the huge possibilities for clean and inexpensive energy through hydropower.

Solar, Wind and Geothermal are all good sources of clean energy, although in some forms quite expensive.

But Hydropower is clean, cheap and has a lot greater, even huge, unused potential than people have been allowed to believe. That includes jobs for those who would be let go by the oil and coal companies. And it includes many small unintrusive local hydroplant locations close to home for many.

In Civics, our students are taught that the United States is not a democracy, it is a republic. The people don’t make laws and decide policy. They elect representatives, electors, to do that work for them.

And it is the representatives, senators and elected administrators who have failed to recognize the depth of the current energy crisis and failed to summon up the courage to defy the lure of the big money campaign contributors and act in the public’s vital interest.

In the words of cartoon character Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”