It's hard to get people to believe in something that's never happened before. That's the sentiment that resonated with David Sandalow, author of "Freedom From Oil," in his visit to Reynolds, Ind., a town of about 500 that has managed to subsist nearly entirely on locally produced alternative energy since 2005.
Sandalow, a former assistant secretary of state and senior director on the National Security Council staff, is an expert in global warming and energy policy, and he shared his expertise in a panel discussion on campus Monday. He very optimistically shared steps by which our country can free itself from dependence on oil, such as progression to electric cars (which he suggested would be fairly easy) and renouncing Carter Doctrine-like policies, which keep U.S. foreign interests focused on our world's most oil-rich regions.
But unfortunately, oil is popular for a very simple reason: It has unique and powerful properties not seen in other energy sources, fossil or alternative. Oil can be stored and transported easily, contains an enormous amount of energy, and is relatively inexpensive. As such an ingrained part of our economy without any clear and readily available alternatives, it will certainly take time and effort to wean off our dependence.
This doesn't mean we are without hope, though. Oil constitutes only 3 percent of electricity generation but 96 percent of transportation fuels, Sandalow said, which means by targeting transportation alone, we can begin seriously reducing consumption. Sandalow said we can increase efficiency by creating more fuel efficient vehicles, but underlying cultural changes must be made to achieve this. For example, we should welcome telecommuting as a way to decrease traffic and fuel consumption in daily commuting. Changing the speed limit from 70 to 55 on major highways could reduce oil consumption by 750,000 barrels a day, said panelist Michael Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy & Environmental Policy at the UT geosciences school.
Alternatives for oil in transportation are on the verge of becoming feasible. Although corn ethanol has not been proven to be cleaner than gasoline and it's not been proven to give off more energy than it takes to create, sugar-based ethanol is an effective alternative. Unfortunately, U.S. corn-growing interests have pulled government support in favor of corn-based ethanol, even to the extent that there are heavy trade barriers on importing Brazilian sugar and sugar-based ethanol. By removing political interests from energy policy, we could have access to an efficient and available alternative to gasoline.
The single-most feasible way to rid ourselves of oil dependence, expressed experts Monday, is through utilizing our country's well developed electrical system to begin powering cars. The energy produced by electricity is far more efficient than internal combustion (how a car burns gasoline), and even using coal to power a car would pollute less than an internal combustion engine. If hybrid car technology keeps improving and oil prices continue to remain high, then it will soon be cheaper to buy and own a hybrid car than a conventional one.
Monday's presentation was not of the fear-inciting Al Gore type, but actually portrayed an oil-free America as a thing that is completely in reach, in terms of both time and money. How ironic, considering the panel's presence at a University built in large part by oil revenue and economically managed for and by big Texas oil men. The University of Texas owns oil and gas royalty rights to approximately 2.1 million acres in the Permian Basin of West Texas.
UT and the state of Texas are nearly synonymous with oil, and it's doubtful the powerful elite of either entity would want to become free from it any time soon. And rightfully so. Consider the sponsors who made Monday's anti-oil presentation possible: The LBJ School of Public Affairs is named after man who worked tirelessly for the oil industry and relied in large part on its financial support, and the Jackson School of Geosciences is a name bought by Big Oil success John A. Jackson with the intention of furthering petroleum geology.
Even at a local level, we put endless resources into petroleum geology and engineering technology that will enable to extract every last drop from the ground beneath us. But take notice - Big Auto and Big Agriculture are poised to fill in the gap left by Big Oil. Auto industries are completely capable of making the switch to plug-ins, and we should set a governmental standard with a time line that will bring an eventual complete switch to electric transit. No denying our inevitable depletion of oil, alternative energy industries should be the focus of large-scale investment - the type that fuels (no pun intended) the existence of big university systems.
Face it: At this rate, oil's out and alternative energy is in. UT's West Texas oil fields, just like many of those in the rest of the world, have seen a steep decline in oil revenue, which coincides with an ever-growing dependence on that Texas Tea. But we succeeded once in prospering off the energy industry in the early 1900s and - as shown by folks in Reynolds, Ind. - we should believe in something that's happened before.
1 comments