Our energy policy is a mess. This stems largely from our consumption patterns and from fear-mongering by entrenched corporate interests and the politicians they feed. The on-going debate about the Keystone XL pipeline project in America, which will bring oil extracted from tar sands in pristine northern Canadian lands (and have already extracted giant environmental tolls on the affected areas) is actually a small bit in a much larger debate.
That debate is where our energy future lies.
As many environmentalists have said for years now, we must invest in truly renewable energies. As many industry experts have said for years now, it will be decades before renewable energies can provide the amount of energy that we need. The truth of course, is somewhere in-between. It does not take a genius to see that we cannot ramp up alternative energies at a pace sufficient to eliminate fossil fuel usage in the near-term 5 year range. Duh. Yet, the alternative narrative, that we just don't have the resources to plow into making alternative energies more cost-effective or attractive is false also. We may not be able to generate enough energy in the near term, but it's better to get started on that road now rather than in the future, right?
Instead, there is much money being plowed into alternative fossil fuels. As this article from the BBC on shale gas shows, we should be very wary of our love affair with these sources of energy. These sources do nothing to wean our planet off highly polluting and unsustainable use of fossil fuels, and they are extremely damaging to the environment at the point of extraction as well as through their entire life-cycle too.
The truth is, our solutions lie in reducing fossil fuel usage, ramping up and investing some of those billions of dollars of oil profits into wind and solar technologies (er, tax oil company profits anyone? as opposed to giving tax breaks to them? uh, duh?), and - here is the great big huge grey elephant in the room - change the way we consume energy. The fact is, we have exported a societal paradigm to the rest of the world built upon inexhaustible supplies of cheap fossil fuels, which admittedly contain more energy per unit of measure than just about any other fuel source.
How else do we explain the ridiculous proliferation of automobiles carrying single passengers around glorified moving parking lots (aka roads) around the world? Or the incessant building of concrete boxes with no thought to air flows or self-cooling and require around the clock air conditioning or heating? Or the addiction to plastics and other disposable items made for our "convenience" but that are instead just burying our planet under incredible heaps of wasted resources?
We must address energy consumption. Beyond just cutting personal electricity usage or even mandating better fuel standards, we must acknowledge that the era of cheap energy has passed and realign our societies to accommodate a new reality where we make choices to maximize the efficiency of our energy usage. This is why Keystone XL matters. Instead of acknowledging and putting our money into achieving a standard of living given this vision of the future, the Keystone pipeline is the last gasp of a system clinging desperately to a disappearing reality. Can we access ever more strange sources of fossil fuels and continue our addiction to them for another few decades, damned be the environmental impacts and the viability of the society we leave future generations? Yes, we probably can. But should we?
That debate is where our energy future lies.
As many environmentalists have said for years now, we must invest in truly renewable energies. As many industry experts have said for years now, it will be decades before renewable energies can provide the amount of energy that we need. The truth of course, is somewhere in-between. It does not take a genius to see that we cannot ramp up alternative energies at a pace sufficient to eliminate fossil fuel usage in the near-term 5 year range. Duh. Yet, the alternative narrative, that we just don't have the resources to plow into making alternative energies more cost-effective or attractive is false also. We may not be able to generate enough energy in the near term, but it's better to get started on that road now rather than in the future, right?
Instead, there is much money being plowed into alternative fossil fuels. As this article from the BBC on shale gas shows, we should be very wary of our love affair with these sources of energy. These sources do nothing to wean our planet off highly polluting and unsustainable use of fossil fuels, and they are extremely damaging to the environment at the point of extraction as well as through their entire life-cycle too.
The truth is, our solutions lie in reducing fossil fuel usage, ramping up and investing some of those billions of dollars of oil profits into wind and solar technologies (er, tax oil company profits anyone? as opposed to giving tax breaks to them? uh, duh?), and - here is the great big huge grey elephant in the room - change the way we consume energy. The fact is, we have exported a societal paradigm to the rest of the world built upon inexhaustible supplies of cheap fossil fuels, which admittedly contain more energy per unit of measure than just about any other fuel source.
How else do we explain the ridiculous proliferation of automobiles carrying single passengers around glorified moving parking lots (aka roads) around the world? Or the incessant building of concrete boxes with no thought to air flows or self-cooling and require around the clock air conditioning or heating? Or the addiction to plastics and other disposable items made for our "convenience" but that are instead just burying our planet under incredible heaps of wasted resources?
We must address energy consumption. Beyond just cutting personal electricity usage or even mandating better fuel standards, we must acknowledge that the era of cheap energy has passed and realign our societies to accommodate a new reality where we make choices to maximize the efficiency of our energy usage. This is why Keystone XL matters. Instead of acknowledging and putting our money into achieving a standard of living given this vision of the future, the Keystone pipeline is the last gasp of a system clinging desperately to a disappearing reality. Can we access ever more strange sources of fossil fuels and continue our addiction to them for another few decades, damned be the environmental impacts and the viability of the society we leave future generations? Yes, we probably can. But should we?
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