The North Dakota representative for the National Wildlife Federation had an excellent essay in the Bismark Tribune. He writes about the need to pick up the pace in alternative energy and makes a pretty strong case for action now in the U.S. Congress.
Here’s the essay by Jason Schaefer:
We shouldn’t fall behind in energy
We are on the brink of a huge transition. This summer saw the anniversary of the moon landing. Today, we have the energy race. It’s a race to develop and deploy low-carbon energy technologies.
At $6 trillion globally, energy is the mother of all markets, and it’s growing.
Right now, other countries are beating us in the clean energy race. Europeans will get 20 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020. Denmark already gets 20 percent of its electricity from wind.
China has the most aggressive energy efficiency program in the world. Their vehicle fuel efficiency standards far exceed ours. The Chinese will soon lead the world in wind and solar production, and they are already building the next generation of cleaner coal gasifiers. China is investing $12 million every hour to green their economy.
Sustainable technologies in solar, wind, electric vehicles, and other innovations will drive the future global economy. But today, only one-sixth of the world’s top renewable energy technology manufacturers are based in the United States despite the fact that we invented many of these technologies.
We can either implement policies to build U.S. leadership in these new industries and jobs today, or we can continue with business as usual and buy wind turbines from Europe, batteries from Japan and coal gasifiers from China.
North Dakota with its world-class wind, biomass and carbon sequestration potential, could dominate the new energy economy.
We must act now if we want to win the clean energy race. Like T. Boone Pickens says, we can not go another 40 years without a plan.
We need comprehensive federal climate and energy legislation. The longer we wait, the further we fall behind.