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We
live in a world of cant, ideology, conventional belief, marketing,
hogwash, hogwash marketing, and crazy spin. It’s your money, saith the
tax cutters. The market is always right, according to the
fundamentalists. Free trade lifts all boats, declare the yacht owners.
It’s only a correction. Evolution—just a theory. Kyoto would damage the
American economy. Our occupation of Iraq is about spreading freedom,
not oil. The Coalition. Freedom fries. You’ve been selected to receive
a free… whatever.
The Energy Independent, whose first posting
you are apparently reading, has a point of view, too, which is unhidden
and, perhaps, in some ways, unremarkable: We can’t go on like this,
darling. We cannot indefinitely burn more and more fossil fuels, many
imported from countries you would not personally want to hold hands
with, without risking adverse consequences, economic, environmental,
political and military. So we must find a new path.
With a firm
sense of denial installed in Washington and scant recognition from the
old media, the United States has entered the century of energy
independence. For economic, environmental and political reasons,
freeing ourselves from the unsustainable and increasingly risky system
of fossil fuels we have today is the great challenge for our
generation, not only in America but across the planet.
It’s
important to say at the start that energy independence is not about
energy nationalism or disengagement from the world, but about freeing
everyone from dependence on the old fossil fuel economy and the old
thinking that goes along with it. How that change can be achieved is
unknown at this point in time. Can we ween ourselves gradually? Or must
we await catastrophes and then respond? How deep into denial have we
slipped, complacent to believe the energy system we have now is and
always will be?
Today there is a chronic stalemate between the
fossil fuel status quo and the politics of energy transformation
through innovations and replacement technologies, alternative energy
sources, more efficient energy use, global collaboration and
networking, and public policies supporting market developments.
Disruptive innovations such as distributed electric generation or
cap-and-trade emissions systems won’t conquer real markets without a
preliminary bout in the virtual marketplace of ideas. Real markets
aren’t perfect, rational or sufficient—and choices depend on knowledge
and leadership. The marketplace of ideas on energy transformation is
fueled by dissemination of news, information and knowledge, by debate
and by vigorous advocacy. The Energy Independent is a blog dedicated to
just that.
Multiple trends favor an increasing spotlight on energy independence:
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The peaking of global oil production sometime in the early 21st
century, combined with projections of growing demand for energy in both
industrialized and developing regions, including energy-hungry China
and India.
- The effects of burning fossil fuels and the buildup of greenhouse gas
emissions in the atmosphere on weather patterns and climate, sea
levels, agriculture and land use.
- The need for eradicating poverty, improving living conditions and
natural rights to the billions of humans in the developing world
without risking ecological collapse.
- Instability in the Middle East-Central Asian oil patch, prime sources of fossil fuels.
- Emerging markets in alternative energy sources and highly efficient
technologies as the twin pillars of a sustainable global economy.
- The recognition that market forces alone are inadequate to achieve an
emerging global energy regime and a new sustainable economy in the long
term.
These
trends and their effects on societies, economies and the environment
will be with us for the next 50 to 100 years, as the world begins an
inevitable transformation from the era of fossil fuels toward a more
prosperous, secure and environmentally sustainable energy future. The
mission of The Energy Independent is to provide a timely, interactive,
editorial source on energy independence developments.
In the
interest of full disclosure: I’m no economist, engineer or academic.
I’m not an energy expert. If I know anything about energy matters, it’s
because I’m a hyperactive reader and have a lot of experience paying
fuel bills and trying to keep moving through life via car, train, bus,
airplane and, often, bicycle and foot. By trade, I’m a poor scribbler,
who earns his daily bread as a newspaper editor and columnist in the
so-called mainstream media. Unfortunately, the mainstream has far
exceeded its capacity for pollution and is no longer swimmable or
fishable for those with an independent spirit and the purpose of
shaping public opinion through old-fashioned realism.
I make no
claim to being an original thinker. Like most writers, my talents lie
in the shrewd purloining of others’ ideas. Among those who have
strongly influenced my life and thoughts are Homer, Herodotus,
Xenophon, Rabelais, Cervantes, Montaigne, Sir Francis Bacon, Voltaire,
Jefferson, Paine, Goya, Mozart (and his librettist Da Ponte), Balzac,
Mark Twain, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Conrad, Schumpeter, Robert Heilbroner,
Rene Dubos, Lewis Mumford, Edward Abbey, A. J. Leibling, Paul Fussell
and John Kenneth Galbraith.
I have never blogged before. I feel
a bit of the thrill a virgin feels on his or her first outing,
although, in terms of penning and publishing, I’m more like an aging
prostitute, with plenty of unprotected sex to look back upon. But in
the same way, I feel like a gay must feel when s/he decides to come
out: I look forward to putting out my news and views on energy
independence in a place where everyone can see them and pick them up,
if they’re good, sound or well argued, or where opponents may hack me
up in a thousand pieces, if they don’t like ‘em, and point out my every
tiny error of fact or mistaken logic. In short, the lifting of the
fraudulent burden of always being right, wedded to a generous
retraction policy.
I’ve been interested in and curious about
energy issues for about 40 years, in fact, ever since my father, a
mechanical engineer, bought my older sister a Saab (the primitive ones,
with the 2-cycle engines) as a college graduation present circa 1964.
I’ve had a long love-hate relationship with the internal combustion
engine, an unblemished romance with the bicycle, and built my first
passive solar room in 1984. For about 30 years, I was a kind of
professional Baby Boomer, adventurer and globetrotting journalist,
specializing first in Latin America and then the Soviet Union and the
follow-on, failing nation-states of Central Asia. Specializing in
making trouble: I’ve been kicked out of more countries than many people
have visited, always in the pursuit of a story. So now, here’s my
story, and I’m sticking with it till it throws me or I run out of room
or steam or breath: the story of how humanity will venture to the next
level of civilized development, overcoming the challenges and obstacles
offered by the old energy economy and its Cyclopses, Medusas and Sirens.
Here
are some promises, or maybe, better, premises, I will try to fulfill on
The Energy Independent: 1) I’ll try to be as honest as I can, never
knowingly publishing a falsehood; 2) I’ll try to be as transparent as
possible, using the networking powers of the web to help the reader
evaluate my conclusions; 3) I’ll try to be as vigilant as possible to
my own biases and opinions, and as open-minded as possible. Doesn’t
serve anyone’s interest to fight the dogma of the old thinking with a
dogma of the new; 4) I’ll try to be as aggressive and tough as possible
in the reporting and advocacy of what I deem true and valid, offending
or defending as serves the public interest in energy issues—especially
the politics of energy independence; 5) I’ll try not to be too naïve or
idealistic; 6) I’ll try not to be too cynical or arch. Finally, 7) the
journey to energy independence will be long and arduous, so I will also
try to be an entertaining, amiable guide. If nurturing energy
independence can’t provide some fun, what’s the point?
Those of
you who have made it through this rant are very welcome to respond with
a pat on the back or a swift kick in the tuchis. And, of course, to
read upcoming postings.
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