America's Understated Energy Potential

From the Energy for America blog post Update from Ohio

My job while on the tour was to be the speaker who offered a few fragments of data about our energy situation. To restate those fragments briefly — we have all the energy we need to be self-sufficient, the only obstacle in the way is federal policy. That is by now so obvious and so uncontested that i feel no need to repeat the particulars of the argument.

I would like to note, however, one disturbing feature of almost stop of the tour. People asked us for jobs. That may initially seem unremarkable, but upon further reflection it struck me as an indicator of our situation. No matter where we were, people asked us for work. In each instance, there was a certain amount of palpable desperation in the request.

This Nation is in trouble. When able-bodied men are compelled to seek employment from the equivalent of a traveling road show,you know things are bleak. Please don’t waste any time trying to convince me that the situation is improving or that all we need is to spend more time traveling down our current path. We need to become deadly earnest about our employment situation. We need to do everything we can to help everyone who is willing to work. As part of that, as an important part of that, we need to become serious about developing our energy resources. Because exploring for and producing those resources will lead to other opportunities in places like pipe factories, refineries, fertilizers plants, chemical plants, etc.

The tour started for me as a straightforward effort to educate people about the necessary linkage between energy and jobs. But over its course, it became a personal and emotional ratification of the rightness of our course, the wisdom of our actions, and the importance of the effort. The work continues, the cause endures, and the dream will never die.

Environmental scholar Steven Hayward of Energy for America spells out America's energy potential and political failures.