rip van winkle

[Guest guest]

Dream or Nightmare? -- An ENN Commentary

 

February 17, 2005 — By James Quigley, Center for Sustainable Energy

Let's imagine a modern day Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving's fabled character

who fell asleep for twenty years. To what kind of a world would he awaken in

2025, two decades from now?

 

The optimist of course would have Rip end his slumber in a world that has

transformed itself. No longer do the industrialized countries rely on imported

oil to fuel their means of transport. No longer is it necessary to engage in

military conflicts in oil-rich nations. Instead, a vast network of

grid-connected wind and solar devices produces a surplus of electricity that not

only powers the built environment, it generates sufficient supplies of hydrogen

to propel us down the highway eliminating acid rain while curtailing global

climate change. The immense wealth previously exported for oil has instead led

to massive investments in renewable energy and energy conservation technologies

at home spurred on by attractive local and federal tax credits creating good

jobs in a sustainable economy. Rip awakens to clean air and international

security.

 

Then there is the pessimist. He sees Van Winkle aroused from his sleep in a

violent storm, brought on by rapidly shifting, over-heated air, rammed up from

the south against a frigid front precipitated by melting polar ice to the north.

In the 20 years of Rip's snooze, monumental volumes of carbon from combusted

coal and a nearly exhausted supply of oil have accelerated climate change to the

point that the hurricane season has been replaced with an ongoing pattern of

routine violent weather that regularly approaches hurricane force. Agriculture

has been stretched beyond its limits. Food scarcities aggravated by alternating

droughts and floods are as widespread as the fuel scarcities that everyone has

come to live with. Renewable energy resources, stunted by government

indifference and aggressive policies favoring fossil fuels, have never amounted

to much. Our once mobile society is confined by its largely atrophied ability to

get from point A to point B because it has run out of gas. Rip wonders if he's

just having a bad dream.

 

Either of these scenarios have been vividly detailed in a series of recently

published books, among them Lovins, Lovins and Hawkins' Natural Capitalism,

Rifkins' The Hydrogen Economy, Michael Klare's Blood and Oil, Worldwatch's State

of the World and others. Is anyone listening, or are we all just snoozing like

Rip Van Winkle? Are we too busy with our gas guzzling fleets of SUVs, post

modern hotrods and three-car garage castles in the suburbs to make the

connection between a war in Iraq with our insatiable thirst for oil? The answer

is neither a simply yes or no.

 

Happily, there is a robust and thriving renewable energy and energy conservation

industry, complete with solar PV manufacturing, wind farm development,

alternative fuel vehicle technology and a whole series of energy miser

appliances, lights and HVAC equipment. Despite the prevailing government

policies that render precious little support for them, a growing cadre of

entrepreneurs possessing the vision and determination to move forward with clean

technologies do so anyway. But will they be able to make enough headway to stave

off the gloomy forecast of the end of oil and global climate change? We can

dream. We can also stay awake.

 

_______________________

 

James Quigley, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Sustainable Energy.

 

 

40 years in the local store

Got forced out by the supermarket

The price of all your favorite meals

Stays low but now you can’t afford it

Send in the supermarket forces

Stick it on a card to save you cash

They know your details in a flash

Streamlined sets the mental tone

Now everyone’s a shopping clone