Energy Common Sense

We learned ages ago that when we settle next to a river we should set up the latrine downstream. It was common sense not to poop in the water we intended to drink.


Today there are so many of us adjacent to so many streams and rivers used for drinking water that someone is always downstream from us. So we have learned to create sewage treatment plants to manage our dark water and return clean water to our streams and rivers.


I read that in the Southeast a chemical storage tank ruptured and contaminated a river, drinking water for thousands of people. How is it possible in 2014 to have hazardous chemicals stored next to a river that's used for drinking water? The decision to allow that facility to exist completely lacks common sense.


A week later coal ash slurry contaminated another stream in the Southeast. How was that possible?


The short answer, I suppose, is that local communities are so desperate for any kind of economic activity that they approve dangerous facilities or operations despite the risk and despite the dismal record of unregulated businesses to protect the environment. A second answer is that the Federal EPA is dysfunctional, either on its own because of infiltration by industry shills within its ranks or because the Congress refuses to fund the EPA at appropriate levels to actually protect our citizenry.


As if this type of assault on natural resources is not enough, in our lust for cheap natural gas we have initiated fracking on a massive scale. Fracking not only uses up precious water resources but it contaminates that water with hazardous chemicals so that treating and recapturing it for people or crops is not feasible. In addition, fracking wells are so deep they have the ability to cause minor earthquakes and the ability to contaminate aquifers with the same witches brew of chemicals. What are we thinking? That thousands upon thousands of these wells will have no environmental impact? And that burning the fossil fuels will have no climate impact?


If our water is contaminated or simply used up we won't survive. (California is currently in drought--how will they grow our food?) Does anyone think we will be able to evolve and drink the contaminated water? Where is our common sense?


Another lesson we learned ages ago is that we could burn fuels to heat our dwellings and cook our food, but we could not breathe the fumes from the fire. So we vented the fumes outdoors. Now we are very sophisticated. Powerplants vent the fumes and particulates for us. Our cars' catalytic converters treat some of their emissions but still cars mainly discharge them into the air. And natural gas we burn at home is vented to the air. Everywhere we look we see businesses and industries venting their noxious emissions into the air as well. As do airplanes. As do trains, trucks and boats. As does anything that depends on fossil fuel for energy.


Our atmosphere is captured in layers surrounding the planet, it cannot escape. It's as if the planet were wrapped in a bubble. The scale of human emissions into that bubble is unimaginably large. The so-called greenhouse gases are captured in the bubble and that are warming the planet. This is common sense. Yes, the atmosphere has a massive volume of gases but can anyone really believe we can spew massive volumes of greenhouse gases into that mix without changing it? Can we really deny the science that shows carbon actually trapping heat in the environment?


Common sense for ships whose crews tired of rowing across the seas was to invent sails to harness the wind's energy. Common sense for settlers was to fill a tank with water and let the sun warm it for showers, or to wear dark clothes in the winter to absorb the sun's heat. Now we have wind and sun creating renewable energy on a large scale.


Science warns us that we are dangerously close to catastrophic global warming. We know why it is happening. We know how to prevent the next few degrees of warming that will tilt the balance. Common sense tells us we need to convert to those renewable energy sources--sun, wind and others.


But, what are we doing? We are fracking for natural gas. We are drilling for oil wherever we can. And now we are proposing the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the United States in order to carry tar sands from the Canadian plains down to refineries in Louisiana for export to the world. An inconvenient truth is that the Canadian tar sands, the dirtiest type of oil reclamation, contain enough potential emissions by themselves to tip the balance of global temperatures beyond the point science and the world (except Canada and the US!) have defined as a disaster. Are these policies common sense?


Driving all these maneuvers to pollute our water and our air are profits, mainly for large multi-national corporations that do not even pay their share of US taxes because they hide profits off-shore. They have been able thus far to pollute without consequence. This is not common sense. Instead it amounts to a subsidy being paid by US citizens to wealthy corporations and it needs to stop. Regulation and taxation are the government's means to level the playing field. When the playing field is level the renewable energy industries will compete favorably and the fossil fuel industries will decline rapidly.


It is common sense to move quickly to:
1) Stop subsidizing fossil fuel industries with tax breaks and tax havens;
2) Introduce stronger emissions standards across the board;
3) Heavily penalize industries and individuals that pollute water supplies;
4) Heavily penalize industries and individuals that pollute air supplies;
5) Subsidize research into new renewable energy sources;
6) Subsidize conversion to household renewable energy;
7) Lead the world in research and practice to halt global warming.