Buffalo Boy's Blog
Giving You More Than Just My Two Cents
Energy: September 2010 Archives
We Are Losing on Renewable Energy
While our tea party/repuke party in this country creates distractions and keeps limiting the ability of the democrats to function as the majority party we are losing. We are losing ground in the renewable energy sector. Instead of leading the way and creating opportunity to be a leader and export our ideas overseas we can now sit back and watch as countries like Brazil who has been energy independent for years, they don't use any imported oil, China is making huge progress in solar and wind technology and we can now add the UK to the list.
The UK has created 250,000 jobs in a deal that will do no more than insulate homes....what a novel idea. Could you imagine that right now in the middle of this economy if our president came out and said tomorrow I am introducing a bill to the congress and the senate that will CREATE 250,000 jobs to promote energy efficiency? How could the republicans turn that down?
Say what you want about Al Gore, but the guy has been bringing up ideas to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and energy and god for-friggin-bid to reduce our need to do what was done in the gulf this past summer and the right wing and frankly enough independents think hes some lunatic. Global warming or not, insulating homes decreases energy, creates jobs and saves me, you and every other person who owns/rents a home MONEY. Who doesn't want to save money?
Add to that, the UK has built and opened the worlds largest offshore wind farm. The argument I always hear is...well wind is unreliable....anyone who has ever gone to the beach...what is always happening weather wise at the beach? WIND. Right now I am sitting in my office at home and I have my window open, there is nary a breeze, but I guarantee if I go to the shore of Lake Erie or Lake Ontario there will be some breeze coming in off those respective bodies of water. Go to the ocean, any ocean, and that breeze turns into WIND. This wind farm they built created JOBS and will power 200,000 homes. Thats a pretty big chunk of England and takes a pretty big bite out of their goal to create 15% of their energy from renewable sources and decreases what they buy/import from foreign sources. Folks, the US is losing in this respect, we are losing on a lot of fronts, but you want to increase jobs, decrease dependence on foreign oil and help save people money? This is the way to go and we can't get out of our own way because the repukes and right wing wackos in this country are doing nothing but distracting us from our real needs/goals. The manufacturing base in this country would be revitalized with any progress toward renewable energy. Anyone on the right would say the private sector will take care of itself, well I'm waiting and if we keep that line of thought up we will be waiting a long time for anything to take shape on that kind of scale. The government would make its investment back on the fact that people would be put back to work implementing these projects. Its time to start catching up with the times and getting our heads out of our asses. This kind of stuff should be front page news to show that it can and is being done, just not here. The so called greatest nation in the world....except when we continue to fall behind in areas such as this .....we are far from the greatest nation, we are lagging and missing incredible opportunities to turn this ship around. President Eisenhower funded the interstate system we all enjoy driving on so don't tell me our government can't stimulate a large scale project such as what the UK has done.
