I have always been “energy aware” because it costs money. Last year I bought a Tesla automobile and have not bought a gallon of gas since. My electric bill increased about $30 per month while I used to spend about $150 per month on gasoline. The electric car really saves money on the energy expended to travel. Many people whom I know think I was trying to save the planet, but they did not realize that to charge my car I use electricity that is produced by burning coal. Trading gasoline carbon for coal carbon is not really doing anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I am helping my pocketbook but not the planet. I will never save enough to recover the cost of the car, but then the real reason I bought the car was my love of technology, and the car is a marvel of technology.
Saving the planet through alternative energy production is the main push by the green movement. Politicians are promising to stop the use of coal in ten years and then stop using oil and gas. Sounds great but is impractical and impossible to achieve. If everyone in the country switched to electric cars in a few short years there would not be enough power generated to satisfy them. Replacing the gasoline that we use will take enormous amounts of alternative energy, and there is not enough wind or solar to accomplish this in a short time. Windmills have a short life and are maintenance hogs. Solar panels are expensive and have to be maintained on large areas to produce. Tesla has started to sell an electrical-producing panel that doubles as roofing for your home or business. This and other innovations might eventually start to close the gap, but there still will be a shortage of energy production in the near future. The only answer is to use atomic energy but not in the classical sense. That is not by building the huge generation units as we have done in the past. Instead we should use the technology that the US Navy uses and build smaller units that we use to power large ships and bury them near the large usage points. They would last thirty years and be replaced. The amount of electricity generated would be much smaller than we now produce because there would be little loss due to long transmission lines. Of course there is a large anti-atomic energy group that is against using any form of atomic energy, but they should find a way to power their homes without it.
I am not one who believes that the earth will end due to man-made climate change. I don’t think that we can replace God as the ruler of the atmosphere but do believe that we can put enough impurities in it to make living difficult for many. The natural resources of coal, gas and oil are finite in the earth and will eventually be used up completely. We use these resources for many things other than energy, and it would be great if we saved some of them for future generations. This is the reason that I am interested in replacing these resources with alternative energy production. There is only one way this will ever happen in a way that will not starve the lower income groups and still provide the necessary energy to heat, cool and light our homes. The politicians will never get it done because some of the requirements would cause them to lose votes, which is a political no-no. Private industry will take it as far as they can but will stop when the payback is less than the investment. The only answer is to create a new Manhattan Project with a 50-year timeline for complete renewable energy replacement of fossil fuels and replacement of coal for medicines, oil for textiles and asphalt and gas for polymers. The progress of this project would reap great advancements as it was achieved, and perhaps the fossil fuel workers could be transitioned into the new energy production gradually rather than starting another mass unemployment as we have seen in the coal fields. One of the presidential candidates has stated that he would retrain the coal miners and make them computer programmers. Coal miners work with their hands and backs not their fingers on a keyboard. They are retrainable, but so far the federal training programs have not worked as we can see in Appalachia, southern West Virginia and other mining areas that have been shut down. Rather than new job training to put coal miners to work, they have pushed them to drugs and alcohol, and the opioid epidemic has taken many lives through overdoses. New manufacturing plants and infrastructure building to draw those new plants is the best way to replace mining, gas and oil field jobs. Of course, politicians have to spend money they want to use for reelection to pay for the infrastructure needed. In West Virginia it has always been thought that the tax system kept industry out of the state, but the lack of roads, railways and airports has been the major culprit. It is hard to import raw materials and export finished products without transportation infrastructure to handle it. The money spent on retraining programs could have been better used to build the new roads that are missing now.
The first atomic bomb was built by a group of scientists with no politicians present, and the feat of landing a man on the moon was accomplished by a group of scientists with no in-house politicians. The only way for us to replace the fossil fuel energy that we now enjoy is to do the same thing as the bomb and the moon shot. That is to commission a group of scientists tasked to find the replacement energy needed during a fixed amount of time with a fixed budget. It is possible and probably the only way to get this done. It will never be done by marching in the streets and creating two opposing sides that want to argue the need of new energy sources or the cause of climate change. They both miss the point of needing alternative energy and will never agree to do anything about it. Votes and elections will not answer the problems that the earth faces but just chase the can down the road. The money needed for the research and the unemployment caused by political actions will never accomplish anything other than line the pockets of politicians. We need to stop arguing about climate change and global warming and start to do something about saving our finite fossil fuels for future generations.
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