We are facing crisis of desire

Complaining about high prices won’t solve the latest round of the “energy crisis.”

The solution exists only if the will of the nation wants the solution to be found.

At the dawn of the 1960s, President Kennedy set the ambitious goal of getting an American on the surface of the Moon and returning safely to Earth by the end of the decade.

Despite the technology not existing when he made the speech, the nation got behind the goal and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history on July 20, 1969.

It took cadres of engineers, tens of thousands of Americans working hard on solutions, to reach that goal.

The solution to the “energy crisis” takes the same kind of commitment.

Standing in the way are a lack of definitive leadership on the issue, which would coalesce the national will, a lack of entrepreneurial vision, and a too-narrow focus on the short-term bottom line to see the potential of a richer and more vital future.

We place the term “energy crisis” in quotes because there isn’t one, really. It’s a business crisis and an environmental crisis and a technological crisis, but most assuredly it is not an “energy crisis.”

There are potentially hundreds of years of supply of coal in the ground in the United States and decades of known oil reserves.

The problem isn’t a lack of current resources, though there will be a true crisis one day if we continue down the path of living for today without worrying about tomorrow.

When the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel that controls the supply of much of the world’s oil, first turned off the tap in 1973, the resultant gasoline lines should have served as a wake-up call to get to a Kennedy-like drive to end dependence, either on foreign oil or oil altogether.

Some 35 years later, our cars are still running on gasoline, our trucks and trains on diesel, and the national economy’s success depends in part on the whims of oil suppliers, brokers and traders and nations that don’t give a whit about America’s national interest.

In between, the price and supply of oil went up, went down and fell to the back burner of the national discussion. Americans’ tanks were full even if drivers were paying a few cents more at a time, but the bottom line was fat and Wall Street was booming. Home values were increasing and retirement plans were fattening on the boom.

The energy issue became a laughable topic for historians stuck fighting the desires of radical loons left over from the early 1970s.

That focus on profit and fat stock portfolios that helped develop disinterest has led directly to the “energy crisis” we face today.

Yes, the government decided to push ethanol, made from corn, as a way to bolster farming and solve international oil dependence, but the push failed to consider its true impact. Food prices rise as corn is grown for fuel, not for food, often at better prices to the farmer than prices for wheat or human consumption of corn. And ethanol still needs gasoline to be mixed with it for fuel.

Obviously, the nation needs to reassess the ethanol road.

Alternatives to petroleum abound.

Electric automobile production should be just around the corner, finally, as battery technology improves. Honda is ready to test market a hydrogen-powered car for the masses this year.

Mass transit in major cities is making a comeback, though such options are limited at best in rural areas and most cities smaller than Steubenville and Weirton and some surrounding communities, where we’re still fortunate to have buses on the roll.

Vision exists, too. Ask members of the local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers about a future where Midwestern manufacturing states are revitalized by the alternative energy industry, making windmills and solar cells and improving technology that will supplement — not supplant — coal-fired and gas-fired power plants to supply all the additional electricity demands the nation will face, even without electric cars plugging into the grid every evening.

Ask U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, D-Bridgeport, about his vision of Eastern Ohio as a kind of Silicon Valley of a new energy age. Unfortunately, he’s but one voice calling out on Capitol Hill. The nation needs 435 Charlie Wilsons calling for, planning and implementing the legislation for immediate and far-reaching changes.

The problem is, each time the nation has gone to the energy brink in the past, the oil taps reopened and the will to seek solutions vanished. That’s got to stop.

Ethanol is a stop-gap at best and an inflation generator on the price of food or a food shortage cause at worst. Coal and oil may be plentiful, but they’re still going to run out someday. They need to be exploited and used wisely in the interim as other solutions are developed. Energy independence and strength based on today’s fuels must be developed but the will to go further can’t be stopped.

What’s lacking isn’t ideas or abilities.

What’s lacking is a true, national spirit, the can-do, must-do desire to see a future and seize it.

There could be room for Big Oil and Big Coal and a host of other players in a brighter economic future where the United States makes its own energy while others argue amongst each other over scarce resources.

The crisis isn’t in energy. It’s in desire.