Our Energy Crises Were So Totally Preventable

A friend in the solar business I’ve known since high school writes:

Since the last oil embargo we have had bad or no planning, policy written by corporate and foreign funding of U.S. politicians.

We should have done energy efficiency, renewable energy back then. We knew (decades ago) that CO2 was a problem, when we were richer and could have afforded (a solution). It’s do it now time and it may be too late.

It is frustrating that after 45 years energy efficiency and renewables still have not happened in the U.S., while Germany, Holland, China,,,, and other countries are doing it and selling our own US funded researched products back to us.

By the way, I feel bad for the Hong Kong protesters and am seeing the true face of the Chinese government that sells so much to the U.S. and has put so many of our factories out of business.

I respond:

Yes. In brief, our problem is that our government is owned by the oil companies and that our people don’t seem to care. China’s problem is that its government is totalitarian, and that whether its people care or not is largely irrelevant.

In any case, the real tragedy of all this is that the crises surrounding energy that are very likely to inflict damage on our civilization over the next 100 years were (and, I believe still are) totally preventable.