The Fix

So what can be done to begin to fix just a few of the problems we are facing today both at home and abroad? Perhaps ironically our problems abroad can be fixed by focusing our resources domestically. The United States needs a domestic energy program that will sustain itself for the next generation and the generations beyond. We also need a healthcare system that will allow those in need to be covered whether for the flu or the most life threatening disease. We need to shore up our social security system; a system that everyone agrees is broken but no one has the courage to fix. We need to strengthen our economy and realize that we simply cannot outsource ourselves to prosperity. Finally, our elected officials cannot be exclusively beholden to those who have the means to buy themselves influence.

Leadership with regards to a national energy policy has been lacking for the past 20 years. While our leaders have given lip service to the need for an energy policy, the reality is that our energy policy is to drill for and seek additional sources for oil. This policy is so well re-enforced, in the early days of the Bush administration that our vice president held a secret meeting with executives from the energy industry that to this day the agenda and the participants are still unknown. Alternative energy for day to day use is just now becoming a reality for some. While green energy sources are available they continue to be expensive to the average energy consumer. It is a fact that while the US is a leading producer of solar energy systems, those systems are exported to countries like Germany, a leader in the use of solar electricity. With actions dating all the way back to the Reagan administration, tax breaks for wind driven energy were cut while today we publicly enhance oil company profits with generous tax incentives.

Technology is available to assist us in becoming less dependent on oil. It is naive to think that oil will be completely eliminated as an energy source nor should it be. Oil is plentiful. But much of it resides in hostile, remote or unstable regions of the world. Oil needs to be part of an overall equation that makes up our domestic energy policy. It should become a diminishing part of that equation. The same incentives given to the large oil companies should be instituted down to the consumer level for those who deploy energy means not dependent on oil. This should include conservation as well as fossil fuel alternatives. Just as the modern version of the combustion engine has changed so to will the oil independent alternatives.

We should not wait for the best alternative but rather use what is available and the market will evolve with better and more efficient alternatives to oil. Incentives should also be given to those who wish to invent and create better and more efficient ways of producing and transporting energy. We need to change the way we think about our use of energy. Our parents had the luxury of a limitless supply of energy. Our children will not have that same luxury. This generation is wrestling with how to make the transition while not impacting our way of life. It is important that we learn from other countries around the world on how to save our resources. Many of those countries are well ahead of us when it comes to alternative energy sources and conservation. What we do poorly is look to other cultures and countries as examples of what we could do better. We also need to insist that the international community step up and join us as partners worldwide. The US cannot continue to go at it alone. Finally, our leaders should lead. We elect them not only as representatives but as examples. They should not only use, but be leaders in promoting visible and high profile methods off alternatives to oil. Would it be nice to hear a story about how our elected officials were not jockeying for a bigger plane in their new position, but rather about how they were considering an alternative to travel to bring them closer to their constituents?

It is time for our leadership to make difficult decisions. It is said that we cannot kill off the domestic oil industry that employs hundreds of thousands if not millions of people world-wide. We have already done this to our manufacturing sector under the guise of globalization. It would seem that we are more reluctant to decimate the white collar jobs that makes up much of oil industry. The good news is that much of this sector could easily be re-employed innovating new alternatives to energy. Furthermore, the oil companies while chasing drilling sites all over the world could themselves be private sector leaders in alternative energy sources.

Finally, we need to take a good hard look at ourselves. While somewhat changed during the past year, we need to ask ourselves why the view of America falls so quickly in the eyes of the world community? One answer is that we make up a very small percentage of the world’s population yet we consume a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources. That may have worked for us sixty-five years ago right after World War II, but the world has evolved since then and our foreign policy has not.

Another answer may be that rather than continuing to pillage the world’s resources, we now compete with emerging countries such as India and China on the open market for these same limited resources. Finally, much resentment seems to have come through globalization which has brought American products to foreign countries displacing local shopkeepers, store owners and proprietors of food and lodging establishments. Is this really the way to spread the American way of life? Just as we wish to preserve our heritage, others wish to do the same. Does might make right? If we continue to spread one form of democracy, one form of capitalism and tell others that they should be more like us, we can only expect what we get when it is asked “why do they hate us?”