Solution?
Scientific American’s Febuary editorial is another unproductive attack on Bush Administration energy policies without offering anything substantive in return. Apparently, the editors (who happen to believe in global warming) believe that the government should be promoting conservation instead of promoting old and new forms of energy production.
The energy bill would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars on the development of unproven technologies that may never be adopted by the private sector.Rather than resurrecting the failed 2003 bill this year, Congress should start afresh with a law focused on energy conservation. The energy saved through efficiency measures since the 1970s has been far greater than that produced by any new oil field or coal mine. As those measures came into effect between 1979 and 1986, the U.S. gross domestic product rose 20 percent while total energy use dropped 5 percent.
First off, I’d really like to see where they get their data from. Yes, this is an editorial, but at least point in the direction of where the data came from. Secondly, how about the past eighteen years, especially from 1994 and onward? During this time is when the Information Age really began to take off and electrical devices began proliferating like viruses. How about the comparison between GDP and energy use for that time period? Additionally, the authors promote the use of energy sources other than “oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear.” One of the alternate energy sources is wind farms, but as a later article in the same issue points out, “Unexpected bat kills threaten future wind farms.” So, not only will environmentalists object this “renewable” energy source, they’ll also object when it goes up in their backyard.
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