Published: June 26, 2008 11:36 pm            

ADAMCZYK: The way the wind is blowing

The price of one gallon of unleaded cracked the four-and-a-quarter mark at the Kenmore filling station I patronize (I point this out, in part, to benefit the historians and archeologists of the future who’ll be mining the microfilm versions of the dead-tree versions of this newspaper for clues about our world), but I observed that the readout of the “$” figure now goes to four digits. If anyone wants a thousand dollars worth of gas, the pump is prepared to accommodate.

Unlike many residents, though, I’m not angry. I’m past angry. My wrath is currently reserved for members of the United States Senate, men and women more desirous of clogging up government than clogging up 100 CEO chairs in American business, and their intent to delay anything remotely resembling an energy-rich future.

I first heard about H.R. 6049, “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008” last week, when the Republicans in the Senate refused to consider it. The bill has been languishing in Congress for a year. If you know nothing about it but its title, you know the current occupant of the White House has done nothing to help speed its passage.

H.R. 6049 has a number of extraneous riders in it, but it basically continues a tax break on solar energy projects, carbon capture projects, biofuel development, research into plug-in electric vehicles, and energy conservation. All that stuff you imagine when you consider how your children and grandchildren will deal with environmental and energy issues.

The bill will renew (not create, renew) incentives that are helping nascent non-oil energy businesses. Wind power, geothermal, all that stuff that could help solve this country’s fixation on burning and importing energy; processes and inventions that can be attached to your house or installed in the community now (not just when the oil runs out); entrepreneurs who will find the business climate particularly hostile without such a tax break. If a big market for these devices could be developed in America, they would presumably become cheaper and more efficient. They would become a legitimate alternative to imported oil, coal and the rest.

The Republican method seems to be killing the bill by filibuster, and reliance upon the Persian Gulf and upon drilling for more oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The current tax incentives run out at the end of the year. The bill in Congress would extend the investment tax credit eight years for installing solar energy devices, the production tax credit one year for wind power devices and credits of three years for geothermal and other renewable-source energy. This is the sort of thing that could make the non-oil energy business take off. Take a guess who’s stalling the bill’s progress, and how closely aligned to Big Oil their re-election budgets are.

I’m no expert on government, nor on the physics of transferring energy, but I know enough to understand the future of this country is being compromised. President Bush himself admitted this land is “addicted to oil” but has ignored or trampled every opportunity to do something about it.

Ruefully, I have to admit he’s not alone. I’ve been hearing the phrase “energy independence” from every president since Nixon, and have grown into advanced age awaiting a coherent, encompassing national energy policy. Each succeeding wave of young citizens has matured to become American adults who wonder which sheik wants them to suffer and why this country sends its money to people who don’t like us (wait until they find out it’s money we’re borrowing from the rest of the world).

The legislation before, or under the foot of, Congress is 12 pages long, and merely continues support for small businesses with new ideas for harnessing energy. When I hear Senator McCain tell me that American forces might be permanently entrenched in Iraq, the way they are in South Korea, it is the matter of stalling on alternative energy that I think of.

I envisioned a future in which automobile manufacturers compete with vehicles powered by gasoline, ethanol, batteries or hydrogen. Kenmore houses might have solar panels on their roofs; there would be backyard windmills in others. Municipal power plants would be a combination of technologies designed to wring megawatts out of anything that moves, radiates or flows through a pipe. Congress is currently in a position to keep the ball rolling to a destination such as this, where the cost of energy isn’t a critical and growing part of a citizen’s or a corporation’s expenses.

The United States Senate is showing where its heart lays. It is assuring us a prospect of worry, escalating prices and the guarantee that future generations of Americans will be putting on battle gear.

Ed Adamczyk is a Kenmore resident whose column appears Fridays in the Tonawanda News. Contact him at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.

        

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