A few weeks ago news came out that President Obama was stalling the decision on the Keystone Pipeline from Alberta, Canada down to Texas. This was no doubt a political move tied to the 2012 election.Apparently, the company that is building the pipeline acquiesced to demands from environmentalists that the pipeline avoid certain areas of Nebraska that supply water from an aquifer there. NPR had reported earlier in the same week that the Canadians were going to look to China to sell their oil since potential environmental reviews that would have been part of rerouting the pipeline very well may have delayed the deal. Some argue that this would have been a reason to go ahead and build the pipeline as planned, reducing resource scarcity and ensuring supply.
I’d argue a slightly different tact about “going ahead” with the project. There’s a great quotation that I recently inserted into my dissertation proposal (which I’m supposed to be working on right now and not this site) that says: “To be a teacher is to be a prophet – you are not preparing a student for the world of today but for a world twenty to fifty years into the future.” While referring to colleges and universities, I am going to link it to the world energy economy. Oil is the 20th century’s fuel. Biofuel (algae, switchgrass, agricultural waste that is not tilled back into the soil/composted) is the future. The US can lead, follow, or get out of the way.In order for the U.S. to lead – something we at 2nd Green Revolution would like to see, as would the rest of the world – there needs to be a functional political atmosphere, something that obviously doesn’t exist. Without a government that can come together for the benefit and security of the nation’s future, leading the energy revolution is the last thing we will be doing.
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