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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Energy conservation and security
  • Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 08:30:46 -0700

One of my heros is Amory Lovins, who with his wife, Hunter, runs the Rocky Mountain Institute. Here is RMI's home page:
http://www.rmi.org/

Lovins is a semi-young physicist who has been steadily educating people of influence for decades. He shows how energy is one of the keys to national security. He is the one who conjured the concept of negawatts, the idea that using less energy produces profit. He helps companies, governmental agencies and individuals make more bottom line by operating more energy efficiently.

RMI's office building is a wonderful example of energy efficiency. It is located in the mountains of Colorado but uses minimal energy for heating; the heat from computers and people actually supply a substantial amount of the heat needed after solar gain.

In the early 1990s, RMI staff studied the White House complex and some time after, measures began to be implemented to reduce pollution and save energy. I believe that one of the subsequent presidents stopped the work.

Here's a quote from RMI's Energy Page:
"RMI's early energy work was aimed mainly at electric utilities and oil companies, advocating the advantages of reducing demand through efficiency rather than simply increasing supply. In recent years we've shown many other types of companies and organizations how they can boost profits by using energy more productively.
"The Institute's unique Approach to Energy offers fundamental insights into many other resource issues. There are close parallels between our energy work and our advocacy of profitable climate protection, efficient vehicles (Hypercar® vehicles), green buildings, and Natural Capitalism."

RMI is a nonprofit organization doing what our elected leaders are failing to do. Energy conservation seems to me to be common sense. It makes sense from an economic and security point of view. We can make our homes energy efficient but we can't make our country energy efficient until our elected leaders stop being the whores of big oil.

Here's the column that got me going this morning:

No Mullah Left Behind
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: February 13, 2005

The Wall Street Journal ran a very, very alarming article from Iran on its front page last Tuesday. The article explained how the mullahs in Tehran - who are now swimming in cash thanks to soaring oil prices - rather than begging foreign investors to come into Iran, are now shunning some of them. The article related how a Turkish mobile-phone operator, which had signed a deal with the Iranian government to launch Iran's first privately owned cellphone network, had the contract frozen by the mullahs in the Iranian Parliament because they were worried it might help the Turks and their foreign partners spy on Iran.

The Journal quoted Ali Ansari, an Iran specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, as saying that for 10 years analysts had been writing about Iran's need for economic reform. "In actual fact, the scenario is worse now," said Mr. Ansari. "They have all this money with the high oil price, and they don't need to do anything about reforming the economy." Indeed, The Journal added, the conservative mullahs are feeling even more emboldened to argue that with high oil prices, Iran doesn't need Western investment capital and should feel "free to pursue its nuclear power program without interference."

This is a perfect example of the Bush energy policy at work, and the Bush energy policy is: "No Mullah Left Behind."

By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush team is - as others have noted - financing both sides of the war on terrorism. We are financing the U.S. armed forces with our tax dollars, and, through our profligate use of energy, we are generating huge windfall profits for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, where the cash is used to insulate the regimes from any pressure to open up their economies, liberate their women or modernize their schools, and where it ends up instead financing madrassas, mosques and militants fundamentally opposed to the progressive, pluralistic agenda America is trying to promote. Now how smart is that?

The rest of the article is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/opinion/13friedman.html





  • [Homestead] Energy conservation and security, Gene GeRue, 02/13/2005

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