Charles Lane's Washington Post article reminds us that in spite of the questionable environmental benefits alternative energy sources promise to bring our world, the optimal energy choice is not always the most promising.
Need an example? Try sitting trapped in commute traffic in a blizzard for six hours without freezing...
in a battery-run vehicle.
Your battery powered vehicle will fail you in a very short time, its battery depleted leaving you to your own devices.
You might even admit to yourself "I wish I had bought that energy efficient gasoline powered car".
You might even opt for one of those "evil" SUVs, if you survive.
And let's not forget that this "efficient" source of energy, electricity to charge that battery, in most cases ironically comes from...
Bingo! Coal and oil: our most readily available, clean and economically effective source of energy.
More importantly, one can deduce that in terms of our quest for a cleaner environment, natural transition (read "the marketplace") is the operative word.
We Americans are being forced into a artificial transition from one energy source another.
A transition of this magnitude should and can be expected to last many, many decades.
Point? Fossil fuels and carbon-based chemicals - along with the high profile spills that sometimes happen when they are extracted, transported, refined, and used by the worldwide market- are not going away anytime soon.
Cleanup of oil spills continues to be an issue and provides opportunities for innovative development such as Enhanced Molecular Capture.
Mandating alternative forms of energy and transportation will never be effective and will in fact be destructive to our fragile economy.
The market must always determine how energy is produced and distributed.
As a nation, for this transition to be successful, we need to concentrate all the best environmental solutions we have at our fingertips to manifest all the best of what we leave for our children; a cleaner, cheaper, safer environment.