The interviews that I am conducting that will eventually form the chapters of my upcoming book on renewables are, by design, on a variety of different topics. Yet I can’t help noticing that powerful common threads are emerging from the words of a range of different types of professionals speaking on topics that, on the surface, have virtually nothing to do with one another.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this lies in the politics behind Big Energy. Here are a few points of consensus:
- A “cozy” relationship exists between government regulators and those they ostensibly regulate.
- This relationship is spawned from the fact that regulators often come from — and later return to — those industries.
- Political campaigns are financed largely from contributions from the corporate giants whose interests the legislators are asked to regulate, presenting huge and obvious conflicts of interest.
All of this may sound like “old news” — so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning. Yet here is a variation on this theme — perhaps more intersting — that actually comes up in our my conversations even more often that this “the fox is guarding the henhouse” discussion above:
The political cycle is two years. Advocating an idea that does not produce demonstrable results in that time period is political suicide. Such support has no upside, and will be used by the supporter’s opponents as evidence of stupidity or corruption. Yet investment in renewable energy — in all its many forms — is long-term (certainly more than two years) by nature. Throwing money quickly and carelessly at the energy problem without thinking it through is guaranteed to produce failure — including gross inefficiencies, and, ironically, more ecological damage.
And guess who wins when renewable energy projects misfire? That’s right, it’s the status quo boys, heartlessly pumping their oil, greedily mining their coal, and recklessly splitting their atoms.
Again, I point to our political machine as the true culprit underlying the horrible environmental effects that the energy industry is wreaking on us. In particular, if we do not see intense grass roots efforts demanding a total reform of campaign finance law, it appears that we are doomed to sit idle while the last few billion barrels of oil are sucked from our earth and its exhaust fumes dumped into our skies.
I’d love to hear readers’ comments here.
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