During World War 2 the United States was faced with the prospect of defeat by foreign enemies and the threat of a terrible new weapon. Recognizing that something had to be done our government began a crash program and in less than a decade went from theory to practice in the development of the Atomic Bomb.
Nearly two decades later we faced a war of a different sense, a cold war with the Soviet Union. President Kennedy saw the need to fight them on every possible front. Once again we rose to the challenge and in less than a decade went from our first space launches to landing a man on the Moon.
Today we need to fight a third battle, this one for energy independence. Right now we are forced to either fight wars we don’t want to or to bow down to dictators around the world.
We could instead move beyond this with a crash program to reduce our reliance on foreign oil by 50% in the next 10 years and another 50% in the following 10. Total energy independence by the year 2038.
Years ago Congressman Randy Forbes introduced a plan to establish a commission that would consist of experts who will report to Congress what needs to be done. The goals included higher fuel efficiency in cars, more solar and biofuel energy as well as reduction in energy consumption.
At the time the story was largely ignored by the media but also by his fellow legislators. They fell into the traditional partisan roles of either pushing for radical environmental rules or simply ignoring the problem.
There is also the X-Prize, which brings a free market angle into the project but we would need major government investment as well. But in the long run this would be a savings given the money we now spend in the Middle East.
You would think that with increasingly expensive gas, rising energy prices across the board and the burden of our troops overseas that people would want to change, but that is not the case.
His proposal is well covered in the WSJ article and deserves to be heard. If you are a reader of this blog, please contact your members of the House and Senate and urge them to support this proposal.
It is far from perfect and certainly will require a lot of adjustment to work out, but it is at least something less than the partisan gruel being put forth by everyone else.