Sunday, August 20, 2006 10:06 PM CDT
Letter: Coles County can serve as U.S. energy model
By KENNETH E. BOWER, Ph.D
TRACE Photonics Inc., Charleston
Sen. Barack Obama made a compelling argument for energy independence as a national priority in his recent Charleston town meeting. I will restate the importance of this issue and the pivotal role our community can serve.
Americans burn 25 percent of the world’s oil and we pay dearly for the privilege, mostly to foreign governments and corporations. The cost of this imported oil is a significant fraction of our international trade deficit. The trade deficit is financed with borrowed money, also primarily from foreign sources. As a nation, we are essentially burning fuel bought on credit. If we used more of our own energy resources (for example, natural gas, coal, hydro, nuclear fission, solar, biofuel, wind, and geothermal) we could minimize our trade deficit, the interest payments we are making on the national debt, and the burden we are saddling on our children.
Not only is the excessive burning of foreign oil expensive, but it has environmental consequences of possibly catastrophic proportions. As robust as the earth’s environment may appear, 6 billion people are surely changing the face of the planet. We have affected the atmosphere through increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, leading to a warming of the planet.
Whether we can do much about that or not as individuals, we should be very concerned about global health issues as the great nation we are. We should promote, research, and foster energy conservation and environmentally friendly energy conversion concepts such as solar and nuclear.
Changing our energy economy is no small task, and we have necessarily been protecting our national security interests through military involvement in the Middle East. If we relied on our own energy resources, we would have no need to be in the midst of bitter historical religious disputes, which grow fanatics faster than those terrorists self-destruct. Energy independence is a national security issue that can save American lives.
Coles County is preparing to act in ways that can serve as a model to other communities and other countries. As a finalist for the first FutureGen Alliance plant, we may have the opportunity to help demonstrate that 275 MW of electricity can be generated from coal (in which America is very rich) with greatly reduced carbon dioxide emission. An ethanol from corn facility is in the works. A coal gasification to synfuel plant is being planned for Oakland. We are at a crossroad in this whole fantastic discussion.
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kay wrote on Apr 10, 2007 9:27 AM: