Alternative energy
Before everyone unquestioningly embraces wind power as the latest answer to all our energy problems, some unfortunate facts about our energy use as a nation need to be faced.
Wind power, ethanol and other forms of alternative energy, while all wonderful ideas, are not viable long-term solutions in the face of America’s disproportionate energy consumption. Our nation makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we consume about one-fourth of the world’s total energy resources. Yearly, we consume twice as much energy as any other nation, even China, whose population is four time that of ours.
Our current lifestyle is not a sustainable one. Energy costs are bad now, and are going to get worse; no meaningful cost reduction is in sight. If we want our energy costs to go down, we need to learn to be more efficient users of energy, instead of trying to sustain a lifestyle which has no hope of continuing as we close in on the end of the era of cheap energy.
I will let others argue the wind power question. The only solution to our energy crisis is conservation; unless Americans can learn to do so, wind power, ethanol and other forms of alternative energy are nothing more than a band-aid on a corpse.
Andy FitzGibbon
Elkins
30 August 2008
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Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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