The Way It Is: The Era of Energy Trades War for Comfort

It’s hard not to love cheap energy. We can go many places on a small budget. We can live and work comfortably at a manageable cost. We can have light, mobility and climate control with plenty of money left over for food and fun. It’s a dream life, which is nice, but awakening time has come.

It is contrary to human nature to walk away from that which has served us well. Since our comfort currently endures and much of that rests on how much energy is available and at what cost, it is difficult to seek change. Yet change has come. We are both agents of change and victims of it. We talk about our desire to control our fate in this arena, but our

approach is piecemeal and unsustainable.
The ice is cracking. We keep on skating.

Leadership on this issue has to come from Washington. A strategy is needed that embraces all major facets of energy: production, disbursement, new technology development and availability, affordability, environmental protection and security. A single strong speech and a few experimental programs are not enough. A far-reaching program that will have an effect on the lives of all Americans is needed. A bad energy situation exists now and we’re not dealing with it. We’re just paying for it.

Government can intervene and make things better. It has been done before. In the 1930s, great swaths of this country had no electricity. The defenders of the status quo said they would be irresponsible if they spent lots of money to get electricity to many poor and rural areas. Such undertakings would be an injustice to their customers and shareholders, they said, among many other things.

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