Why Wait
Herseth At Dakota Ehtanol Plant - Wentworth
South Dakota's U. S. Representative, Stephanie Herseth on Monday in a speech before the Sioux Falls Downtown Rotary Club called for more energy independence and new mandates for renewable fuels made from agricultural products.
Her proposal and advocacy are admirable.
But what is the reason for waiting? We elected her to represent us now for a term expiring at the end of this Congress. There are still nine or ten months in the current Congress, if these proposals are righteous, is there not enough time this year to implement them?
Perhaps She is taking her re election for granted or just hoping to make it a campaign issue.
President Bush called for action on energy independence in his State of the Union Address. The time is now and we should not wait.
Energy Independence is certainly needed but our elected officials have failed miserably to act on it. We have had and been discussing an energy crises since the Arab Oil Embargo in the early 1970s. While we haven’t had real progress it has proven to be a great political issue. With the exception of less than a handful, every Presidential want to be who ever stumped through Iowa all praise corn ethanol and want energy independence.
Twenty-five years ago, then Congressman Tom Daschle sat in my Father and Brother's office and said that the key to protecting America's key democratic ally in the Middle East was for American to become more energy self sufficient. At that time the United States imported about half it's oil requirements. Today we import about seventy-five percent. (While I would stand corrected on my numbers the trend is accurate.)
The examples are endless. The President got aboard the promise them something in the future bandwagon and now Stephanie wants to get on board too. Senator Larry Pressler ran a tractor at the U S Capitol that ran on ethanol and often rode in parades with his ethanol powered John Deere. Governor Rounds drives as E85 pickup and touts energy independence. The Politicians produce plenty of Hot Air but not much New Energy.
Congress passed an energy bill last year that created incentives for new production and mandates for renewable fuels but did little to relieve our dependence on foreign energy. New production, hopefully just keeps up with the growing need.
If we are to achieve even a modicum of real energy independence we need real change and to make some hard choices.
Electricity - America must come to grips with nuclear power. We should be generating electricity with nuclear power. It makes little sense using expensive and clean natural gas to produce electricity or even our low sulfur coal for that matter. Wind power is a great renewable but it can not begin in a significant way to provide for our energy needs.
Transit - A large portion of our energy is used for transportation. We need to provide incentives for the use of hybrid vehicles, vehicles that are more fuel efficient and increased use of mass transit. I too hate mandates and choose to look for incentives. Hard choices need to be made.
New Technologies - need to be discovered and applied. Processes like coal gasification or making petroleum out of oil shale. I recently read that a sustained gasoline price of about $3.00 per gallon would make oil shale an economic option. While I don't advocate 3 buck gas, it demonstrates how we might get a larger share of our needs domestically.
These encompass major reform and simply touting bio fuels is great but they alone will not make us independent. Why are we waiting on this for the future? (so we can make speeches)
The time for energy independence is now!
South Dakota Straight Talk
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