Dear Rep Bies,

According to the very thoroughly researched article in November’s issue of Scientific American, the only logical direction our energy supply can pursue is “renewable energy”, that is, those energy systems for which we do not need to be digging up or harvesting material.

These energy sources are: Solar Power, Wind Power and Geothermal.  The article makes it very clear that once installed, these power sources quickly outdistance oil, coal, biofuels, nuclear and hydro-electric since they just keep giving more power without having to “fetch” the fuel from some other place.  The combination of these three could, with a reasonable and sustained “investment” (why call it a “cost”) become the very backbone of our national and world wide power systems in a surprisingly short time.

All our other fuel sources are drying up at a much faster rate than the oil and coal industries want us to believe.  And even if we have another 50 years, we know that this kind of constantly replenished energy is the only solution that will stand the test of time.  We are very close to running out of U235 and Thorium would not be far behind.  We are probably already on the downhill slope of the peak of oil production world wide, just as we peaked out in 1973 for the United States.  Coal is so destructive not only to our atmosphere, but also to one of our most vital resources:  Natural Beauty, the foundation to the worlds number one industry: tourism.  Coal mining is now one of the greatest destroyers of our water, soil and forest resources as well.

These kinds of renewable energy installations can be put up almost anywhere and don’t need to be centralized. The roofs and sides of existing buildings, in our own front and back yards, etc. This would lead to a much more widely distributed work force installing, maintaining and updating this equipment, plus failure of one windmill here or a photo voltaic assembly there will barely effect the overall system, whereas centralized power plants make the system very vulnerable to shutdowns.

I urge you to obtain this issue of Scientific American (follow the link).  It represents one of the clearest and best supported surveys of the whole energy issue that I have seen yet.

It is also available on their website in a little different form, which I do not find as informative, but which contains most of the charts and graphs that make their explanations so clear.

Jobs in manufacturing require a very great reinvestment.  These jobs have left the US because they were sold off in the 80′s to the low bidders in South East Asia.  We have a long way to go to regroup and fire up the manufacturing engines in this country!

Thanks for listening.

Dave Lea,
Fish Creek