|
There are several things we know we need to do in the very near future. We as a nation need to get off foreign oil as soon as possible, and fossil fuels shortly after that. Both candidates for president have made statements about a national mandate ... to do the things we need to do as a great nationwide project, like the Apollo Moon shot project in the sixties.
Less than a decade after John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to send an astronaut to the Moon, we did it. We did it with slide rules and imagination, and very little else.
Today, we know what we have to do, and we have all the tools we need to do it ... computers, a good sense of what the end result will look like ... a far better vision of the goal than we had in 1961.
Our energy future will include things like wind and solar, nuclear and coal gasification, in places where such things make sense. Our homes will be heated not by oil but by geothermal and heat pumps, which are powered by clean energy. We have already changed our building codes to improve efficiency, and we will retrofit our older homes to do the same. Our energy future will include hydrogen and electric cars. Our energy future will include both massive infrastructure and home-grown small wind, solar, and hydro, supported by feed-in tariffs.
And here, in Maine, we stand ready to reap the benefits of the new energy possibilities, in terms of our innovation, our educational possibilities, and our ready workforce.
Unity College, for instance, is America’s environmental college. They have majors in every possible subject we need to start turning out innovative engineers, environmental scientists, sustainable agriculturists, and more.
Our local industries, too, stand to gain by such a mandate. Newer, more efficient heat pumps that can warm homes in cold weather are already being produced by Hallowell International in Bangor. Bath boasts a small wind turbine factory. Other companies around the state are producing biofuels, electric cars, innovative insulation, and small hydro systems.
And this mandate will also help those who install, retrofit, build. The midcoast is blessed with not only the skilled workforce necessary to implement some of the new technologies, but the vision to see why it is necessary and vital to our future. By extension, the coming ‘Apollo’ mandate will not only save our children’s futures, but also save the planet. Clean and green energy will, by its very nature, decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.
The only thing we need to work on is political will. Maine’s future will probably not look like her past. But that’s okay. It will be better.
|
