Tom Friedman spoke last night at the Nantucket High School as part of an annual lecture series. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize 3 times for his writing, among other praise, and it would not be unreasonable to listen to what he has to say. He spoke for an hour on America's imperative to start "right now" in order to not become irrelevant on the world stage. He linked Global Warming, the Economic Collapse, and the same old Energy policies under one rubric. I do not disagree with his contention that the first country to invent cheap-clean-energy is going to dominate the market and save the world from atmospheric carbon-poisoning. He hopes that will be America but there are no signs among the idiots in Washington that they are willing to come together for this urgent need. They would rather wrangle over drivel and avoid this issue.
If 10,000 scientists in America could get the money and the marching orders to come up with some great solutions (he was somewhat disparaging of the smugness of "Lefties" about driving Prius cars and using CFL bulbs and feeling these are a giant step) then 100 good ideas would be found and two would go on to become the Microsoft or Google of ENERGY. He neatly tied petrodictatorships, 1.6 billion people who have no electric outlet to plug into, and our economic future if we stay the course of creating fewer good ideas and exporting all our jobs to China. One of his great laments is about the waste of american brain-power because the economic incentives to come up with an energy solution are not there. He compared the internet revolution with the energy revolution and pointed to the biggest hurdle to overcome. With computers and iPhones, every time we spent more money we got more features like the ability to make a phone call anywhere on the planet, or surf the internet instead of going to the library. With energy, all we can do is produce electrons in a different way. The net result to the consumer is no different. You turn on a light in your home. Do you care if the electricity was produced by burning coal, or a nuclear reaction, or wind power? Not really, you just want power. So, the motivation of getting something you never had before, like movies on your cell phone, is not there. You just get the same thing, and for a while it will be more expensive.
He proposes that we tax gasoline and oil to provide for our needs like reducing the deficit, etc. but more importantly to create an incentive to look for other solutions to energy. Basically, as long as americans can get gas for their cars at less that $4.50 per gallon, we will continue to drive Hemi-Dodge Chargers, and turn our air-conditioners down to "freezing" in our malls. The emerging world in Brazil, India, and China is building power plants at a rate that nullifies in a day, the energy savings we get by all of our energy conservation though CFL bulbs, Hybrid cars and the like, for a year. We have to think BIGGER than C.A.F.E. standards, we need a whole new ball game, And if there is one thing we Americans can do, it's play ball. Now if we can only get those a-holes in Washington to stop getting in the way of progress by milling around on the field, being too left and too right, and coming up with stupid new rules every day, we might just hit a home run.
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