There is plenty of energy available to sustain us; let's use it!
Last Updated on 12/1/2008
Published on 8/17/2008
By John Brock
Whenever I write about energy problems, as I did last week, I can always count on a small group calling for my demise and lamenting that I don't know what I'm talking about. But let me assure you that I am no newcomer to the energy business.
Back in the late 1960s, I was editing, part-time, a trade publication called "Natural Gas News." We were accurately predicting the energy crisis that was sure to befall America. Few paid any attention. In the 1970s, I became a pioneer in solar energy. I designed and installed the world's first Carrier Air Conditioning Company solar-assisted heating system for a plant I owned. My company also installed similar residential systems as well as solar-assisted domestic water heaters. I have owned two homes with such systems along with geothermal space heating systems. But public interest faded.
There is very little that folks who complain about my thoughts can instruct me on when it comes to alternative energy. In the early 1980s, several business associates and I investigated the possibility of getting into the corn-fed ethanol business. We investigated and visited facilities already up and running, but we concluded that we wanted no part of an industry that might put a little fuel in automobiles but could cause starvation in some parts of the world dependent upon America's corn and grain production. We passed. But today, ethanol production with all of its shortcomings is the darling of a vast portion of the environmental community.
On another occasion in the late 1970s, several friends and I leased the oil and gas rights on 93 million acres in Queensland, Australia. (That is about the size of South Carolina.) We struck natural gas on our very first attempt. We had a gusher of natural gas in the middle of nowhere. The only way to get it to market was to either build a fertilizer factory on top of the well or to pipe it to the outside world. We were thwarted on all fronts by environmentalists. We walked away.
We then turned to oil drilling in the American Midwest. Again, we struck oil on our very first try. It wasn't all luck. We had hired geologists for both ventures who knew where to look. The oil from our well was so pure that one of the partners ran his lawnmower on the first gallon we recovered. Once again, environmentalism thwarted our attempts to develop the property. Again, we walked away, and as far as I know that well is still capped and will be along with perhaps thousands of other wells until we come to our senses and allow known energy sources to be developed.
Perhaps the most interesting energy matter that I have been associated with involved a nuclear plant near Gaffney in upland South Carolina. About 25 years ago, Duke Power Co. (now Duke Energy) had spent several hundred million dollars on the erection of a nuclear energy plant only to abandon it after environmental concerns and unreasonable bureaucratic red tape put the skids on nuclear generation in general. Duke walked away from a major investment. Had they been left alone, much of our state would now be enjoying cheap electricity from that plant.
A small group of us, who were in the motion picture business, bought the unfinished 2,000-acre plant site -- at pennies on the dollar -- from Duke and a number of movies were filmed there. One major motion picture produced by movie mogul, Jim Cameron, and titled "The Abyss," was filmed there. So were several others.
I converted my interest to other ventures, but some of the original investors stayed with the investment and -- can you believe this? -- Duke has repurchased the site and plans to start anew on building a nuclear generating plant on the same site 25 years later. But they will have to start over with the morass of red tape made necessary by a massive bureaucratic system. On the bright side, a belated realization that nuclear energy as our major salvation to the energy problem has finally come full cycle!
Long ago I decided to get out of the energy business because there were just too many unnecessary headaches created by a reluctant government and demanding environmental groups to allow commonsense solutions to the impending energy crisis. I have often wondered how many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of other folks found themselves in the same situation and just quit. I spent my first retirement years as a college professor and university vice president.
Instead of encouraging folks who had a genuine interest in solving our energy problems, the government, at the insistence of extreme environmentalists, set up roadblocks at every turn, and now we are experiencing the folly of this stubbornness.
The bottom line is that America has ample energy sources to supply our needs for generations without foreign dependency. At the very least, we can save our economy by drawing on these resources until we develop sensible, workable and economical alternatives.
The U.S. is blessed with possibly the earth's greatest reserve of crude oil (conventional sources as well as unconventional ones), and, without any doubt, the largest coal reserve and the fourth largest reserve of uranium for nuclear energy.
If developed, we don't need foreign energy in any form! Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Why are we not tapping our own reserves while we await the development of sensible alternatives?
John Brock is retired and lives in Georgetown County. He can be reached by mail at this newspaper, or by e-mail at brock@johnbrock.com.
|
John. It's not a question of whether oil supplies are sufficient to sustain our own needs, it is about whether we die leaving a planet on which our children and grandchildren can thrive and prosper. We can all then hope and trust that, with God's help, they will and will do the same for the next generation, and so on. Wasteful consumption is the problem, not the availability of natural (and/or unnatural) resources. Human beings (of all races, colors, ages, sizes, sexes, nationalities, creeds and/or religions) are a pretty resourceful ;pt/. They'll deal with these problems at time goes on if we do spoil the next for them in the meantime. Posted by Tom Rubillo on 8/18/2008
|
