Guest opinion by DAVE CHASE
Dave Chase is a Wood River Valley resident who is a venture consultant working with emerging businesses, primarily in the technology industry. He also volunteers his time with Climate Solutions (www.climatesolutions.org), a non-partisan, nonprofit organization with an economic development charter to foster the development of clean and smart energy-based companies in the Northwest.
Express columnist Pat Murphy stated in his Other Views column (May 11) that "energy independence for Americans is utterly impossible." While the points he makes in his column are true, that kind of pessimism is at odds with the reality of what our nation has achieved when it puts its mind to it.
In these days of great divides between the right and left, it can be easy to be pessimistic, but this is the same country that launched the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program when national crises were at hand. With 1940's and 1960's technologies respectively, our scientists and engineers changed the world. With 21st century technology available at commodity prices, imagine what's possible. In today's dollars, $20 billion was spent on the Manhattan Project and $100 billion was spent on the Apollo program.
As 9/11 proved, we have an energy security crisis. While I was as disturbed by the political divide in the last presidential campaign as anyone, just six months later I've never been as optimistic as I am today. Consider the following:
· In Oregon, two state legislators considered to be the farthest left and farthest right legislator team up on bio-fuels legislation.
· In Montana, a Democrat governor teams up with Republican legislators to be only the third state to pass a 10 percent ethanol requirement.
· The Economist magazine reports in their "Rethinking the Axis of Oil" article about the growing alliance between defense hawks with enviro-greens to completely rethink America's energy strategy, which will force the White House to play catch-up.
· Senators Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., are teaming up to get loan guarantees for the world's first commercial-scale cellulose ethanol (this process uses farm waste such as wheat straw) plant to be built in Idaho.
· The "Set America Free" group combines noted liberals and conservatives with their recently published "blueprint" for energy security. Two of the leaders are from polar opposite ends of the political spectrum—conservative Gary Bauer (president of American Values) and Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The rest of their leadership represents a similar diversity.
The Set America Free program estimates the cost of their program at $12 billion over the next four years as laid out in their "blueprint," which pales in comparison to what we are spending in Iraq to protect our oil supply. Unlike the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, no new technology needs to be developed. As they state at the end of the blueprint, "Since no major, new scientific advances are necessary to launch this program, such funds can be applied towards increasing the efficiencies of the involved processes. The resulting return on investment—in terms of enhanced energy and national security, economic growth, quality of life and environmental protection—should more than pay for the seed money required."
I'd encourage your readers and editorial staff to read up on efforts such as the Set America Free program (www.setamericafree.org) and the New Apollo Alliance (www.apolloalliance.org) if you desire optimism over pessimism.
