I’m glad that the scientific evidence of global warming is finally gaining general acceptance and that there is increasing public interest in developing a response to the problem. What I don’t get is the current fad that my liberal friends are so fond of promoting these days. Several times, friends involved in environmental groups have asked me to sign up for a “clean energy” plan for our home.

I’m all for clean energy development, but I don’t understand why I should subsidize a for-profit utility company in developing its production capacity. If this is an essential requirement for long term energy security and environmental sustainability, I don’t consider it fair that only the small percentage of do-gooders should bear the costs while everybody else continues to burn fossil fuels at a discount. The incentives are entirely skewed in the wrong direction. Polluters (including me) should bear the true costs of their consumption, while virtue is rewarded.

As far as I can tell, these voluntary subsidy schemes don’t actually take existing power plants off-line. The power companies will have more capacity in the end, which they can continue to supply to their unconcerned customers at unnaturally low prices. At best, it controls a future increase in greenhouse gases, but it doesn’t actually reduce existing pollution.

The cost of sustainable energy should be underwritten by everybody on the grid. The path to a lower energy bill should be through conservation.

Ok, my progressive friends; rip me to shreds.

Apologies to the late Robert Palmer and his estate for title of this entry.

Even as I type, I am listening to Terry Gross’ interview of Michael Klare. As noted on the site for Fresh Air, “Klare says our addiction to oil is driving U.S. foreign policy. Klare is author of Blood and Oil: the Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum Dependency.”

Okay, okay, okay. I finally get it. After years of hearing the phrase “our dependence on foreign oil,” I think I have finally managed to grok the implications of that dependence. Thanks for that, Professor Klare. As he says, “We have securitized oil, meaning that we’ve made it a matter of national security.” As a result, we’re committed to using our military in increasing roles, not just in the Persian Gulf, but in South America, Central Asia, and Central Africa, to defend oil pipelines, oil wells, and— at the cost of compromising core American values—oil regimes. Given the amount of power and money involved, if you thought that there were problems with so-called “conflict diamonds,” oil is bound to be what Klare describes as the pivot of future global conflict.

All you smart people already knew this. Pardon me for being so slow to understand.

My difficulty now is that the analysis of the problem seems so much fuller than the policy options. It’s not Klare’s job to work out all scientific, political, and cultural changes necessary to bring about the end of our dependency. Yet, aside from funding R & D, or pushing hybrid vehicles, what’s there to be done? So often, the phrase “explore renewable energy sources” sounds like a vague, romantic, liberal abstraction; like an uncodified religious belief. So many of the renewable energy resources we know of have their own negative impacts on land or water use; or they just don’t seem that practical. (I’m not falling for ethanol. Sorry, farm belt.) Have you retrofitted YOUR house to convert solar energy for heating yet? The lack of an obvious direction to go makes it easy for status-quo-loving politicians to punt this problem to future generations while digging us deeper and deeper into entrenched fights for control of go-juice.

I’m convinced by enough of the argument to believe that a world competing for the same limited resoure is not sustainable. I’m still uncovinced that we have the necessary innovations, or will, to change things much yet. But I promise, I’ll factor in my patriotic duty the next time I have to buy a car. I also guess I’d rather have spent the $200 billion and saved the tens of thousands of U.S., coalition, and Iraqi lives, by investing in just about ANY alternative energy development, even the goofy kind.