Today, the cost of oil skyrocketed another $11 a barrel, a 13% price increase in 2 days- the biggest two day price gain of oil in recorded history. Today, Exxon Mobil profited more than $1300 per second- the highest profits ever earned by a US company. Today, the average American paid $3.99 to fuel up their car. Today, thousands upon thousands of scientists agree that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are severely hurting our planet. Today, America’s Climate Security Act (aka Lieberman-Warner Bill) got delayed, beaten and then died in the Senate. Oh yes today was quite a day. One might even say… it was off the charts.
Unfortunately it was off the charts in terms less than idyllic, which is why we found ourselves in (or rather sweated and strained ourselves 60+ miles to) Helena, the capitol of Montana, a place where the “big business” of politics takes place, talking to three very interesting and different “green” change-drivers: Richard Opper, Head of Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ); Ken Toole, Montana’s District 5 Public Service Commissioner, and Ben Brouwer, AERO’s Renewable Energy and Conservation Manager.
Even with an incredibly sore butt on a really hard chair I found myself enthralled in the perspectives and solutions, these men had to offer, in terms of what role Montana was to play in the global solution to climate change. “I stay up at late at night wondering what issues I might not have addressed as the head of DEQ and my biggest worry is climate change,” confessed Richard Opper, who recently, with a climate change council put forth 54 recommendations for state law makers on how to move Montana forward in the name of this cause.
When explaining why only 15 of Opper’s recommendations are being considered by the law makers he replied “We are in a transition period, which requires a major shift in thinking. Change is a real pain, and a lot of people see addressing climate change as a threat to coal and Montana’s economic ticket.” Ken Toole agrees saying “we are in the fork in the road of how we are going to move forward… in our current state of severe social, economic, and environmental crises… we need to choose a path.”
All three of these men believe the only way to the this environmental and economic greener pasture (pun intended) is not through the traditional method of coal, oil and it’s greenhouse emitting gases but through three climate friendly steps:
1: Conservation! We need to use less energy.
2: Renewables: Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geothermal, biomass, biofuels and on and on…. We need to start building more of them and integrate them into our system.
3: Technology : We’ve got to invest time and money to better our technologies for these renewables, appliances, cars, etc. to be more energy efficient, cost effective, and sustainable.
However in order to accomplish these three goals we need to rethink our current system of how we obtain energy (moving from large centralized systems to a more sustainable local system) as well as what energy policies we have in place. Attacking the policy angle, Richard Opper believes, that if we create and implement new policies that restrict CO2 emissions, promote conservation and set goals of using more energy from renewable sources, such as Montana’s current policy of “15 by 2015″ (15% of Montana’s energy must come from renewables by 2015) then it will force the innovation of newer and better technologies. System wise, Ken Toole suggests that government subsidies, tax incentives, and government risk insurance would greatly assist in the development of changing our current mode of obtaining energy to work in favor of the development of sustainable and renewable energy in a smaller, decentralized, more sustainable and economical role.
So even though it may appear that we are in a dark cloud in our nation’s history, considering our current state of the environment and the economy, the silver lining is that this seemingly bad situation forces people to take a second look. Energy conservation and renewable technology will play a role which in turn will greatly benefit all of us in the long run making this era but a small blip in our nations history.
–Lauren Green, graduate of the University of San Diego
