Dear Editor,
Only 12 months ago, oil was racing past $100 a barrel, and it seemed like our nation’s ability to address our energy future would become the defining issue for our times. It might be tempting to dismiss talk of our energy challenge as just another fad born out of those crazy subprime mortgage days. After all, gasoline prices have come down, and how can we worry too much about the environment when millions of Americans have just lost their jobs? Nonetheless, there are three key reasons why energy remains an urgent issue.
First, the fundamentals that drove the price of oil and gas to stratospheric highs are not going away. These fossil fuels are finite resources, our ability to extract them cheaply is diminishing and their costs will again increase as global markets recover and as the developing world surges ahead in population and economic growth. The cost of a barrel of oil is already up 20 percent from its December 2008 low.
Second, our demand for foreign oil and the related foreign-policy decisions we make to ensure supply from abroad has greatly diminished our leadership position in the global political economy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. imports 58 percent of its petroleum needs. The top three global oil exporters are Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, and 56 percent of global oil reserves are in the Middle East. If we want to restore both economic and geopolitical strength to the U.S., we need to increase our self-reliance.
Third, the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels is increasingly hard to ignore and policy changes acknowledging this are gaining momentum. Evidence for climate change is so compelling that even oil company executives have acknowledged it as a critical problem. Consider the words of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group that includes the petroleum giants ConocoPhillips and Shell. In their 2008 Call to Action they announced, ‘We need a mandatory, flexible climate program ‘hellip; The most efficient and powerful way to stimulate private investment in research, development and deployment is to adopt policies establishing a market value for GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions over the long-term.’
Awareness is just a mindset. You too can contribute to the clean energy movement by getting involved in your university’s energy community ‘mdash; and if none exists, you can create one. You can also seize the opportunity to build a team and compete for the MIT Clean Energy Prize, sponsored by NSTAR and the U.S. Department of Energy. This competition, open to student teams from all U.S. universities, is designed to develop a new generation of energy entrepreneurs. Enter by Feb. 26 to compete for over $500,000 in prizes.
Every community in the U.S. depends on energy and the solutions to our energy challenge will not come from any one policy, university or company. What will be your contribution?