Comments Provoking Deep Thought

Peter made an interesting comment in our discussion under Hang On To Your Thermostat. He said, "US population growth is relatively low (<1%/yr) of which almost half is due to net immigration. Even halting population growth will not solve the global problem of resource utilization. It is economic growth that presents the problem in utilization of our current energy (and other) resources. Hence the need to expand to alternatives beyond fossil fuels (unless 3rd world countries remain underdeveloped, which I doubt anybody wants!)."

We were throwing around the idea of population control (don't worry, it's just a concept whose cultural history intrigues us, not an actual present day hope for involuntary enforcement) but that's not the focus of this post. Pete's comment got us to wondering about the reasons why we have failed to expand to alternatives beyond fossil fuels to date. Moreover that the economy is now being restricted, in a roundabout sense as a result of our failure to transition to a model of sustainability. After all, it's been nearly two years since the President declared, "America is addicted to oil." Ask yourself how far we've come. Although we're not touching on the immigration part of the comment, you can ask yourself how far we've come there too.

Energy has really become part of The American Dream. We don't picture our lives without it. As a result, much resistance comes from people across the board because they're simply not sure what they are going to lose as The American Dream transitions to an American Green Dream. And the fear seems to trickle through various levels of society. Like a kind of program we run on our collective subconscious "national hard drive." At all costs, we work to maintain the status quo in many cases. The present-day bull market cycle phase in commodities though is shaking up the economy, and rightfully so. The result to the end user naturally is a drastic price adjustment. Three dollar gas certainly appears to have more people focusing on this issue.

A concern for "economic growth based upon resource utilization under our current energy policies," is well founded, as it seems to us, here, that our country is already experiencing the beginning stages of economic erosion as directly related to our energy consumption. The greatest problem being steadily rising fuel prices forcing change. It's very likely that our current resource management plan, which now includes in its repertoire, President Bush personally begging OPEC to release more oil, is collapsing. Our country may continue to experience economic hits manifest in housing bubbles,technology and financial bubbles, restricted credit, economic injections and eventual bank restructuring. As the old model falls apart, our level of ease through the transition will be mostly tied to how quickly we can change and move toward the adoption of biofuels being cautious to never, "write off viable alternatives due to perceived deficiencies."

Perceived deficiencies" are just that. Perceived. And those perceptions have been marketed to us. In S. David Freeman's book, Winning Our Energy Independence, an Energy Insider Shows How, he explains a sense of cold-war pride as the underlying sentiment upon which the habits of American energy consumption were built. "In the 1960's, the idea of saving energy was indeed considered anti-American. When I was the executive assistant to the chairman of the old Federal Power Commission in the early 1960s, I remember the reaction of my boss Joseph Swidler to the staff's projection of the U.S. electric demand for 1980. He said, "Folks, this is lower than what the Russians are projecting. We're not going to let Russia beat us. Go back and give me a higher projection that shows the U.S. as a winner." And they did. We actually thought the more electricity we used, the better off we were. Electricity was connected to "living better electrically," the industry slogan. Freedman suggests leaders like Dick Cheney still subscribe to this kind of nostalgic, post WWII attitude. Freeman notes, "as late as 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said that conservation was simply "a sign of personal virtue...not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

In conclusion, we offer that economic growth under the previous model cannot continue, and it is already slowing down. However, for every action a reaction, for every cause an effect - a new economy will evolve from the old model, and there will be all kinds of niches to be filled. Overall, we're wasting precious time wrapping ourselves in the promises of worn out regimes.