A Proposal to Secure America's Energy Future
Date
2006
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Haverford College. Department of Political Science
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Award
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
Energy is an issue area that combines science, politics, economics, foreign policy, and kitchen table issues all in into one ugly mess. The goal of this paper is to untangle this knot just enough that we might see our way out of it and toward something a bit more manageable. As such, it by necessity leaves out vast amounts of detail, along with entire issue areas. Foreign policy for example, while intimately involved with the issues of our energy supplies, goes totally unmentioned in this analysis, because it would at least double the paper's length and still leave more questions than it answered. Additionally, this analysis restricts itself entirely to the issue of supply. I did this for two reasons. First, the issues of demand management seem much more straightforward. If you build more trains, fewer people will use cars. If you make energy efficient lighting look decent, people will use more of it. Second, I remain unconvinced that demand-side management and increased efficiency can do anything more than slow the tide of increasing energy demands. As long as we remain dependent on nonrenewable energy sources, demand-side management can only postpone the day of reckoning where we have to go beyond efficiency into the realm of deprivation. Demand-side management is critical as a tool to buy us more time to work. But if we are ever to "solve" the problem of energy, it will have to be with new supplies. Finally, this paper is written for the here and now. It makes projections into the next 30 years, but technological breakthroughs could very well render large parts of this analysis obsolete. This writer takes the position that we can only work with what is in front of us. If cheap fusion power comes along tomorrow, you may feel free to burn this. I would be more than happy to have this problem solved for me.