The Continuing Energy Crisis and The Continuing Failure Of The Political Class To Solve It

Before we talk about our lack of a national and rational energy strategy in this country let's review the failures and timelines of political class shortcomings in other critical areas, as we have reviewed in the past few days:

• Nixon declared "War On Drugs" back in the late 1960s and over forty years later we are further away from wining that war than ever.
• In 1983, a Reagan national commission released a landmark document that proved public education in America was failing and provided a road map of steps necessary to reverse the trend of failure. Twenty seven years later, public education is still mostly a failure but costs us twice as much in tax dollars to achieve that failure.
• In 1986, the U.S. Congress demanded that the U.S./Mexican border be secured within 45 days. Twenty four years later, nothing could be further from the truth.

Three major issues that impact the majority of Americans that have not been solved for many decades by the political class but which have cost the American taxpayer TRILLIONS of dollars. Today we had a fourth failure, the lack of a cohesive, national, and rational energy strategy. In the mid-1970s, the economy and the nation was shocked by the oil embargoes and resultant energy crises. More than 35 years later, our energy needs have grown significantly as has our dependence on foreign regimes for much of that energy and our dependence on carbon based energy sources. We are just one political or natural disaster away from the next energy crises.

This failure was brought into focus over the past couple of days as I read about a solar plane test flight that happened in Switzerland. The Associated Press reported on July 8, 2010 that a completely solar powered plane stayed airborne for 24 consecutive hours using nothing but the energy it gathered from its 12,000 solar cells. And this was not just a Kitty Hawk type flight, get just a little bit up in the air. This flight got as high as 28,000 feet above the earth and reached top speeds of 75 MPH as it took laps over the Jura mountains near the Swiss Alps.

The goal of the group responsible for this amazing feat intend to eventually circle the globe using nothing but the energy from the sun. The research team claimed that they proved that a single seater plane can theoretically stay in the air indefinitely using nothing but the rays of the sun.
Clean energy, non-foreign dependence, what a deal. And the entire project appears to have been financed and managed without any help from any government source. Entire cost of the whole project including the around the world flight: about $95 million or about .1% of the amount the U.S. government has acknowledged it wastes in fraudulent and erroneously vendor and other type payments a year.

The main goal of this group is not to replace conventional jet propulsion options but it is more focused on testing and promoting energy efficient technologies. Think about this for a second: if the technology exists to fly a small plane non-stop for 24 hours at altitudes at about five miles above the earth at 75 miles an hour, why can't that same technology be used to power a small compact car on the ground for less than 24 hours at a time and at speeds generally less than 75 MPH? Why has the political class not come up with this kind of solution in the 35 years since Carter was President? If we can waste $100 billion a year, why can't we somehow find a way to effectively spend a fraction of that waste on something as neat and far reaching as this technology? Why do we continue to drill for oil in all the wrong places or subsidize the building of nuclear power plants (and dealing with their deadly nuclear waste) as Obama proposed several months ago when some smart, non-government, non-political class people can fly an airplane on nothing more than the sun's rays? The enormity of the failure of the people running our government is baffling.

Or perhaps not that baffling, if you read an article that was printed the June 20, 2010 edition of the Tampa Bay Times. The article was entitled, "Big Oil's Addiction"and was written by Deborah Gordon and Daniel Sperling. Ms. Gordon a chemical engineer and a transportation consultant and Mr. Sperling is a director at the Institute of Transportation Studies at Cal-Davis. Their conclusion is that while the major oil companies posture about newer, cleaner fuels, they are still fully wedded to their traditional strength: finding and mining or drilling traditional carbon based energy materials via investment massive, multi-billion dollar facilities. The authors talk about a study by Professor Peter Odell of Erasmus University who predicts that the oil industry in 2100 will be larger than it is today. The authors also conclude that the oil industry already has a TRILLION worth of embedded already in existence and will probably invest another TRILLION dollars in the next decade. To think that they are ready to embrace technologies like the Swiss example is foolhardy.

With the money they have invested and the risk involved, the oil companies are not about to step aside and that is where the political class comes in. We now know that President Obama received more campaign donations from BP than any other politician in the past twenty years. Oil company lobbyists are all over Washington DC. Could it be, just maybe, that we have not solved the energy crisis, come up with new technologies, decentralized our energy dependence because of this political/oil company relationship? With relatively minimal investment ($95 million) a small independent group of smart people are flying solar powered plans. I would bet that the oil company spends more than that annually to protect its interests in Washington, interests that are not compatible with a cohesive and diversified national energy plan.

That is why Steps 23, 24 and 25 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are so important. This approach would establish another panel of smart Americans, without politicians and without lobbyists, who would develop an integrated energy strategy that balanced the four needs of being diversified, inexpensive, domestic, and clean. As the article authors point out, the oil industry has too much of a vested interest to be put in charge of this effort, the politicians are too closely tied to the lobbyists and have not proven that they can do a good plan after the past 35 years, and at least one of the members of Congress believes that the island of Guam could tip over; do we want to trust that he and others like him can come up with a relative;y complex and effective energy plan? I don't think so.

So there we have it. The failure of the American political class to solve the drug addiction problem (over forty years and still waiting), the energy crisis (over 35 years and still waiting), the failure of public education (over 27 years and still waiting), and the illegal immigration problem (over 24 years and still waiting). The time for waiting is over, the time to stop wasting money and start solving problems should start immediately. Steps 23 through 29 in "Love My Country. Loathe My Government" is the way to do it. Albert Einstein once said that: "The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Let's not be stupid, lets finally solve something, without expecting over and over again that the politicians and lobbyists will do it for us.


Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/