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Location: Heber City, UT
Reducing our use of fossil fuels for transportation and electricity can be solved effectively through the intangible levers of our market economy. As energy prices have soared, Americans have quickly responded by driving fewer miles, transitioning to more fuel efficient vehicles, and making use of public transportation. Businesses have imposed fuel tariffs and invested more heavily in logistical efficiency. No environmental rhetoric was necessary to effect these adaptations. Individuals, acting in their self-interest, are making the market more efficient as a whole.
The environment is only one realm that wins when fossil fuel use declines. On a grander scale, as more efficiency measures spread deeper and wider within our nation, other areas of policy would benefit. The benefits of reducing our fossil fuel use cascade one-upon-another:
Fossil fuel trade undermines our foreign policy and national security
One spoken about at great length is the reduced dependency of America upon oil-producing nations, where extraction and exportation of oil have encouraged rogue regimes, sparked civil conflicts, and created great disparities of wealth. Transitioning from oil would reduce the necessity of maintaining a strategic military presence in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Guinea. It would remove the incentive for placating to regimes that violate universally accepted human rights. It would stem the flow of American assets to Japan, China, and the UK to pay for oil imports from the Middle East. Reducing fossil fuel use would change American military, economic, and diplomatic policy.
The green economy is not just greener, it's brighter for everyone
If we reduce our fossil fuel use, then either we have become more efficient in our business and personal activities, or we have replaced fossil fuel as a source of energy with other forms. Both have serious, sustainable benefits to our economy.
The simple efficiency measures being adopted today are simple for individuals to implement in their lives: driving slower, combining trips, carpooling, turning off unused appliances, adjusting heating/cooling settings. Deeper efficiency measures are born out of technology and innovation: more fuel-efficient vehicles and appliances, architectural designs that reduce heating/cooling needs, urban planning that integrates residential and commercial zones. These measures spawn well-paying jobs, in the planning, installation, and maintenance phases. Well-paying jobs increases domestic wealth for everyone as spending flows through the economy.
Efficiency alone cannot reduce our dependency upon fossil fuels completely. We must transition to other sources of energy. After all, we are accustomed to driving our cars, enjoying comfortable indoor environments, working productively on computers, washing and drying our clothes and dishes automatically, and being entertained by digital devices. We shouldn’t have to give up our standard of living.
America is the Middle East of renewable energy potential
And we don’t have to. Renewable energies, like solar and wind, could make up for most of the electricity needs of the nation. The Great West is abound in solar energy potential while the fields of the Heartland can continue to produce the world’s grain while wind turbines overhead generate electricity. Like efficiency measures, developing renewable energy technology requires intelligent people. But this initiative also requires an army of highly skilled construction workers, service specialists, and logistical experts. Most of these installations will occur in rural areas, which have seen agricultural jobs disappear as farms have become ever more mechanized. The green economy will also be a boon to Native Americans, who may get the last laugh after all. The land they were relocated to was among the least bountiful for crops, but these reservations are among the world’s best locations for solar and wind projects.
Homeowners also stand to benefit from the development of renewable energy technology as a replacement for fossil fuel use. Tax incentives and rebates for installing solar panels, indirect thermal systems, and even wind turbines are becoming ever more lucrative. Government regulations requiring electric companies to purchase electricity generated by customers are spreading. Electric companies themselves are embracing the concept of net metering because it delays the necessity of building costly new power plants and jump-starting costly peak demand generators.
Decentralizing the grid means less vulnerability to terrorist attack
Urban and suburban areas, with buildings adorned by energy-producing or -capturing systems, are less susceptible to outages. National security experts are rightly concerned about the catastrophic result of terrorist attacks on our electric grid. Decentralizing that grid even more from where it is today, to where a strong minority of electric customers are also part-time produces themselves, makes us less vulnerable to both man-caused and natural blackouts.
The green economy isn't a government social program
None of these measures comes as a result of heavy-handed government taxation and regulation, but rather from government leadership, vision, and incentives. The future green economy doesn’t run on a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, it relies upon the response of individual actors in the current economy to spikes in energy costs. It depends upon innovative and visionary entrepreneurs and scientists coming together to bring cost effective technologies to market. It is fueled by the potential for profit that has been at the root of our national prosperity since the eighteenth century. The green economy will not be led by environmentalists, but by apathetic individuals acting in their own self-interest. Their combined reaction will necessitate that we leave fossil fuels behind.
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