Environmentalists
zap any solution proposed by big business, such as nuclear power.
Big business ridicules environmentally friendly solutions, such
as windmills, as unrealistic. The result is gridlock. Whatever
the solution, someone thinks it's bad. If we're to believe every
critic, then nothing can be done about anything. For example:
Alaskan oil
drilling: The evidence is overwhelming that it won't cause the
environmental harm that ideologues claim. Yes, arctic oil doesn't
"solve the whole problem," but it helps. Let's get started.
Gasoline
mileage standards for sport-utility vehicles: Unbelievably, they're
still defined as trucks, as if they were hauling around bricks.
The car industry says squeezing more mileage out of their vehicles
will add to their cost. So what? Air bags did too.
Hydroelectric
power: Virtually non-polluting and endless. Its critics aren't
just worried about the landscape and fish upstream; some (only
a few, I hope) actually think dams are such a plague that all
of them should be destroyed and every river in America returned
to its "natural, free-flowing" state.
Windmills:
They're scoffed at because they won't solve the whole problem,
either. A few environmentalists are raising "concerns"
about what impact the windmills have on the leeward ecology. When
you add the wind generated by such blowhards to the gusts already
here, America has more than enough wind to spin the windmills
forever.
Nuclear power:
It's much safer than coal mining.
Solar power:
It'll be around as long as the sun, which is longer than we'll
be here. I refuse to believe that technology can't find a cost-effective
way to capture and store the energy.
Offshore
drilling: This is a huge resource whose environmental impact is
small, but it draws fire basically because the drilling platforms
don't look good. Most of the carping comes from East and West
Coast elites who don't want their vistas spoiled, but don't seem
too upset that many have been built off the Gulf Coast, to be
viewed by the people of New Orleans and Mississippi.
The alternatives
seem endless (bio-energy, coal, fuel cells, hydrogen production,
fusion, superconductivity, geothermal and so on), and endless
they must be because it isn't easy turning around the habits of
a nation that consumes almost 100 quadrillion BTUs (British thermal
unit, a standard unit of energy) annually, twice as much as we
did in the 1950s. Granted, not all of the alternatives are of
equal merit, and I've done my share of carping about the merits
of particular solutions.
But when
you emerge from the rhetorical fog, it's clear that the idea that
we're running out of energy is nonsense. The only thing that we're
running out of is patience with the doctrines, self-interest and
politics that are holding us back from our full potential.
So, I offer
one less expensive, simple solution that shouldn't ruffle anyone's
feathers: telecommuting. According to Ted Balaker, a fellow at
the free-market Reason Public Policy Institute, it's perhaps the
most effective way to reduce rush-hour traffic. Census figures,
he said in a recent policy paper, show that telecommuting is the
only commuting mode, other than driving alone, that has gained
market share since 1980. The number of telecommuters who work
at home has grown 23 percent from 1990 to 2000, more than twice
the rate of total labor market growth. Just think of the savings
in concrete.
As a telecommuter,
I consume much less than my share of transportation energy. Even
though I drive a big old man's car, I use less gasoline than those
hybrid cars. And, unlike CTA, Metra and Pace riders, no one has
to subsidize my commute.
Opposition
to telecommuting probably only comes from over-controlling bosses
who want to see all their peons laboring at their posts. Commercial
real estate interests wanting to keep their downtown office buildings
full probably aren't thrilled with the idea either.
Balaker calls
telecommuting the "quiet" success because it's not often
viewed as an important energy conservation measure. I'll go further;
telecommuting could be the biggest thing to change how and where
we work since the Industrial Revolution.
Whatever
its impact, it's still a part of the energy solution, one that
we can agree on if only the doomsayers and special interests will
get out of the way.
