By ERNIE FAZIO //
The prospect of having to deal with the most obnoxious regimes in the world is repugnant to all of us. On the other hand, we still need fossil fuels.
The dilemma is where do we get them, while we still need them?
Bear in mind that this would be a moot point if we followed the roadmap set out by President Jimmy Carter more than 40 years ago. Instead, we go through these “feast or famine” episodes with fossil fuels from time to time, and that must stop.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, this country transformed itself into a war machine that the world had never before seen. Japanese Marshal Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was right when he (allegedly) said, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Today, we need to be awakened again. There are two enemies we need to fight: The first is climate change, the other is being held hostage by some of the most hostile regimes on the planet.
Ernie Fazio: Awakenings.
We need an unmitigated effort to remove the stranglehold that bad actors have on America. Countries like the murderous Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and Venezuela need to be made irrelevant. If we continue to put our fate in their hands, we will continue to be in a vulnerable position.
What is needed is a massive energy effort, equivalent to the Manhattan Project.
This program will delve into every sustainable-energy idea that’s ever been considered and help us refine existing technologies like solar and wind, making them more efficient and affordable and implementing them on a national scale.
And it could research and develop theoretical technologies, including smaller, more modern nuclear power; superhot rock geothermal, which creates super-heated steam generation mined from the Earth’s crust; and ocean-wave generation, already at work in Nova Scotia.
Also in play would be liquid hydrogen, river-current generators and space-based solar panels (beaming power to Earth by low-power microwaves, day and night, rain or shine).
Deep commitment to research and development will get us to a place where fossil fuels are less important, if not unnecessary. Remember whale oil?
Make love, not war: It ended in successful destruction, but the Manhattan Project was replete with breakthrough research.
At the beginning of space exploration, we could maybe name a handful of possible social developments that could come out of space technology. But as we progressed through the years, we developed hundreds of innovations that serve us every day – more sophisticated computers, weather satellites, navigation satellites, communications systems and much more stuff that could only have been imagined decades ago all came out of the space program.
The energy future is also rich with possibilities. And with a very ambitious energy program, we defeat the twin nemeses of global climate change and the hoodlum regimes selling the world their oil.
Ernie Fazio is chairman of Long Island Metro Business Action, a Ronkonkoma-based member organization focused on Island-wide socioeconomic development.
