A Simple Government Part 4

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Leave Your Campsite in Better Shape Than You Found It We Need to Take Responsibility for the Environment

My weekly television show, Huckabee, Huckabee, on the Fox News channel, is taped in Times Square, the heart of teeming Manhattan. A walk through that district can give you a slight case of sensory overload, as you might know from experience. A cacophony of noise, pedestrians and cyclists right next to you, the glitter of huge digital jumbotrons-yes, today's "Gotham" is a long way from Hope, Arkansas, in the 1950s. on the Fox News channel, is taped in Times Square, the heart of teeming Manhattan. A walk through that district can give you a slight case of sensory overload, as you might know from experience. A cacophony of noise, pedestrians and cyclists right next to you, the glitter of huge digital jumbotrons-yes, today's "Gotham" is a long way from Hope, Arkansas, in the 1950s.

Just a quick walk from the studio to a Starbucks on the corner requires quick-witted navigation through a churning sea of humanity. And every one of these people, each of these swiftly moving pedestrians-some forging straight ahead, some blocking the sidewalk to shout into cell phones-has a unique story. It's humbling. So many millions of human beings dealing with their individual problems, hopes, failures, and triumphs.

Sometimes, though, when I'm making my way down Broadway, one story in particular pops into my mind. It's about a peculiar, frail young boy who grew up in that neighborhood in the 1860s, during the Civil War. Wearing thick gla.s.ses to correct his poor eyesight, he was nearly debilitated by recurring bouts of asthma that would render him limp, struggling to breathe.

His mother would sometimes send him up Broadway before breakfast to buy fresh strawberries at the outdoor market. One morning, he was struck by an exotic sight: a dead seal that had been caught in the harbor displayed on a slab of wood along with the mounds of fish, vegetables, and bread. This was, of course, more than a hundred years before seals were designated a protected species, but the boy had never seen this glistening marine mammal. His heart raced as it somehow brought to life the oceangoing adventure tales he loved to read. For some time, he stared at the seal in awe, until he suddenly realized he'd better get himself home in time for breakfast. I don't know whether or not he remembered to buy those strawberries.

When he returned the next day, he was excited to find the seal still there. He was on a mission, having brought a ruler in order to measure every dimension and characteristic of the animal. Pa.s.sersby surely scratched their heads at the sight of this scrawny kid fastidiously recording his data in a small notebook. As it turned out, he dreamed of preserving the carca.s.s in order to author a natural history, but he had no way of doing so. Eventually, almost all of the animal was sold off for its skin, oil, and meat, but the market keeper, well aware of the boy's intent curiosity, gave him the seal's skull.

The boy raced home with it and, before a small audience of cousins, declared it the first specimen for their new collection. On his bedroom door he hung a sign that boldly declared: ROOSEVELT MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

True story. And if you haven't guessed by now, that peculiar, sickly (and many would later say "aggravating") little boy with the goggly specs and fertile imagination was Theodore Roosevelt, who would become the most ardent conservationist (as well as the only amateur ornithologist and zoologist) ever to occupy the White House. Hungry from such a young age for knowledge about nature, he would grow up to set aside 160 million acres as protected federal lands during his presidency, so that Americans could enjoy these preserves for centuries to come. Or as Lyndon Johnson once put it, so that we could see "a glimpse of the world as it was created, not as it looked when we got through with it."

Roosevelt was a complex, charismatic man about whom volumes have been written, and many more will follow. But the princ.i.p.al thing I admire about his pa.s.sion for the natural world was his recognition that nature doesn't exist apart from humanity: It is part of humanity, and vice versa; we are all a part of nature. He understood that sensible existence requires a balance. Today, when we use nature's resources for our benefit, we must do so responsibly and judiciously, so that the generations that follow us can follow suit. And so forth, ad infinitum.

What I've just described is now widely discussed as "sustainability," but it's not a new concept in America and wasn't even in Roosevelt's time. The Iroquois people, for example, who have lived off American soil for centuries, devised the doctrine of "seven-generation sustainability." In other words, all decisions, environmental or otherwise, should be made in light of the impact they were likely to have on the next seven generations. For many reasons, generations have become longer than they were even early in the twentieth century, but just as a workable yardstick, let's estimate that seven generations would be about two hundred years. Now try that measure on what's happening to nature in your town or neighborhood. Probably not fitting that ideal, I'd guess.

The same idea was phrased another way by the Boy Scouts of America, as I recall from my scouting years: "Leave your campsite in as good or better shape than you found it." The rule was strictly enforced, at least in my day. I learned the important lifelong lesson that the land and its resources are for our use and enjoyment, not our abuse and destruction.

On this point, Roosevelt argued, "To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them." His conviction inspired generations of conservationists (and conservatives) to share his pa.s.sion. In fact, it was Ronald Reagan who explicitly defined the connection between conservation and conservatism: "What is a conservative but one who conserves? This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it." For him, the lesson of the campfire applied to the whole of nature.

But both men, if you read carefully, avoided making the mistake of those fervent environmentalists who believe that nature is to be protected at the expense of humanity. I mean, let's keep it real. We human beings leave a mark on the environment. How could we not? Even in prehistoric times, when the environment was altered only in ways necessary for survival (wood fires for warmth and cooking, game killed for food, forests cleared to grow crops), however small the human foot-print, however much in harmony with nature, it was nonetheless there. It was inevitable. Today, of course, there are billions more beside it. In fact, in some cases, the footprint of humanity has become a defining aspect of the land. But we should not beat ourselves up over this fact. Ours is as legitimate a role in the ecosystem as has ever existed.

Ayn Rand once wrote, in answer to especially fanatic environmentalism, "Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon." You don't have to know Genesis by heart to recall that G.o.d created us as part of the natural order, and arguably the apex of it. After all, unlike the animals of the forest or the fish of the sea, we alone possess the ability to contemplate our role in, and our impact upon, the environment.

That intelligence, that ability to reason, is why Roosevelt came to believe that we have a moral responsibility to practice sensible conservation. I see it as a moral imperative, since I believe that our abilities come from G.o.d, to lay our footprint lightly, and wisely, upon the land. We should walk with moccasins, not cleats.

The Undeniable Dangers to the Environment I'm not going to pretend to speak with scientific authority about the possibility of global warming. When well-trained climatologists and environmental scientists don't agree on the basics, what do I know? Does global warming exist as our most urgent threat to the environment? If so, is it caused by the human race, by carbon dioxide emissions from our cars and power plants, among other things?

Can't say. But I do know that while carbon dioxide alone is not dangerous to human health, those auto and industrial emissions contain hydrocarbons that are definitely harmful to us. The answer could not be simpler. We need to reduce air pollution because it is a threat to us humans, whether or not it creates a threat to the planet. By not being effective stewards of the air we breathe, we're not just making ourselves sick; we're actually killing ourselves.

Who is crazy enough to disagree with that? According to the American Lung a.s.sociation, some 60 percent of us live in areas where air pollution is a proven health danger. In its various forms, it causes asthma, bronchitis, lung disease, cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and stroke-some of which, aside from lowering quality of life, can result in premature death. Of course, pollution-caused health risks are highest for babies and children. People who live near freeways-and are thus exposed to high levels of automobile fumes-have a higher- than-normal incidence of infant mortality, heart attacks, and allergies.

The major cause of emission threats is ozone. Though not a problem in the earth's upper atmosphere, where it occurs naturally, it is a tremendous health risk at ground levels, where it creates smog. So far, the best ways to reduce this form of pollution, especially during the summer smog season, are to drive less, reduce electricity use, and not burn wood.

There are exceptions to smog danger. The cleanest air is found in places like the North Dakota towns of Fargo or Wahpeton or Lincoln, Nebraska. But things are not so good in the top ten cities polluted by ozone. Los Angeles, as you'd probably guess, is number one, followed by five other California cities plus Houston, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

The health risk second to ozone is particle pollution. In other words, soot. For the record, Bakersfield, California, suffers the worst seasonal particle pollution, while the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Arizona, axis has the most dangerous year-round. Down the list of dangerous emissions after ozone and particle pollution are carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide.

This is an ugly situation. Simply put, it is vital for us, for the sake of our national health, to cut back on pollution-causing emissions. But one word of caution: Let's not rush into things and pretend to do something useful, rather than actually address the problem sensibly. Aren't you a bit tired of the celebrity types who fly in on a fuel-hogging Gulfstream jet, then are squired in a gas-guzzling limo to a thirty-thousand-square-foot home (one of six or seven they own) in order to lecture the rest of us about using too much energy? I know I am. I only listen to envirocelebs, if you will, who walk the walk. For example, I greatly admire those like Ed Begley Jr. and Daryl Hannah, who actually practice what they preach. I'm not ready, myself, to go to the lengths they do, but consistency of conviction is admirable. Hypocrisy, though popular, is not.

This goes for government ent.i.ties too, not just entertainment stars. For example, until we actually produce more of our electricity from sources other than fossil fuels, it does not measurably change the environment for some states and the federal government to force all of us to subsidize plug-in electric cars by giving tax credits for them. This is a sh.e.l.l game: s.h.i.+fting the demand for gasoline into more demand for electricity. Tax policy can't solve the pollution problem by moving it from the tailpipe to the smokestack. Now, I'm not criticizing electric cars themselves. I own one myself, a golf cart ready for street use, and find it great.

Still, we have to a.n.a.lyze the current situation sanely. At the moment, about 40 percent of worrisome emissions are caused by the generation of electricity. And that's not going to change overnight. In the future, we will be able to use sources like wind and solar energy to produce clean electricity; so electric cars will indeed make more sense down the road, no pun intended. Right now, about 70 percent of our states have renewable or alternative energy portfolio standards in place to encourage the generation of clean electricity. A good start. But in truth these standards are not very ambitious and will be slow to take effect: Typically, they are predicted to result in 15 percent to 20 percent of all electricity being from clean sources by 2020 or 2025.

Where does that leave us right now? One simple answer is to use "smart meters" and "smart grid" technology to reduce emissions by spreading out electric usage across the day. Because smart meters charge higher rates during peak usage times, utilities have found that they're an effective way to use the marketplace to avoid peaks and valleys of demand. I'm sure you've heard some people arguing that reducing pollution is always necessarily more expensive. Not so in this case. Smart meters are definitely a win-win, giving consumers the option of reducing their bills while helping to clean the air. For instance, Salt River Project, the largest provider of electricity to the greater Phoenix metropolitan area (where, as you'll recall, particle pollution is a year-round problem), reports that its deployment of approximately five hundred thousand smart meters has conserved 135,000 gallons of fuel. How? Those clever little gizmos helped the utility process more than 748,000 customer orders, thereby avoiding more than 1.3 million driving miles for customer-service reps. Only about one in ten American households have smart meters as I write, but the Department of Energy hopes to have them installed in about one-third of homes by 2015.

By the way, my wife and I are definitely on board with this approach to pollution problems and overuse of energy. In the house we are building in the Florida panhandle, heating and cooling will be geothermal, saving up to 80 percent of the power necessary for traditional methods. Energy efficiency will be maximized with some solar panels and hopefully a rooftop wind turbine. To quote a certain froggy, it may not be easy being green, but it sure is a good thing.

We Need to Have a Coherent Strategy I'm not building that house as some kind of stunt or experiment. I'm putting my footprint where, maybe, Teddy Roosevelt would like it to be. I think that for a simpler America, we need to pursue all avenues of alternative energy: wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, geothermal, biofuels (ethanol, biodiesel), and bioma.s.s. But to do that, we need to make it possible for the private sector to make sound investments in technologies and projects by setting up a coherent, consistent statutory and regulatory framework. Partly, that means addressing a persistent problem within the environmental movement: the schizophrenia that causes different groups to work at cross-purposes.

Look what happened when the Obama administration recently approved the Cape Wind project of 130 windmill-powered turbines off Cape Cod in Ma.s.sachusetts. This visionary project was supported by the governors of that state, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, as well as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Immediately, rival environmental groups filed lawsuits alleging that the plan violated such statutes as the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. Until we can find a cure for this kind of schizophrenia, we will spend more time tilting at windmills than building them. Right now, the only energy generated by this project is a lot of hot air from lawyers, and I'm afraid that's one source of renewable energy that we haven't yet learned to tap.

The Case for Nuclear Power As I've implied already, there is no one answer to our energy problem. It's also true that, much as I share in the pa.s.sion for emerging renewable technologies, we're nowhere near the point at which we'll be able to discard the old "dinosaurs," natural gas and coal. The truth is, we will need to rely upon them, at least to some extent, for decades to come. While renewable sources like solar energy, for instance, offer tremendous promise, the technology is not yet refined to the point where its costs are compet.i.tive in relation to the amount of energy generated. It's simply not ready for prime time as a utility-scale generating source, although it will be one day. Meanwhile, one "old" technology that is being looked at with new enthusiasm is nuclear power.

Of the 104 American nuclear power plants operating in thirty-one states and generating about 20 percent of our nation's electricity, not one emits greenhouse gases. Moreover, contrary to any memories you may have about Three Mile Island, these plants are very safe. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds nuclear reactors to higher safety and security standards than plants in any other industry. If, as the Department of Energy predicts, America will need 28 percent more electricity by 2035, I simply don't see how we can get there without better utilizing the resource of nuclear energy.

That means I strongly agree with former New Jersey governor and EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman, who has pointed out, "Expanding nuclear energy makes both environmental and business sense." That's a pretty solid combination.

Not only does nuclear energy emit no greenhouse gases or regulated air pollutants, but its costs, although high on the front end, are extremely compet.i.tive with those of other energy sources. To be specific, nuclear power is generated for about two cents per kilowatt-hour, compared to nearly three cents for coal and about five cents for natural gas. Multiply those little figures, of course, and the differences in the long run can become huge. Here's another important distinction. Unlike gas or coal, which can fluctuate dizzily in price, uranium is bought up years in advance at set prices, making fuel costs a very small percentage of operating costs. What's more, uranium is both plentiful and readily available from our allies like Canada and Australia.

Of course, as I've already suggested, the downside is that it costs more to build a nuclear plant than a coal- or gas-fired facility. Also, in the past, the federal licensing/permitting process to start a new nuclear plant was about as enjoyable as being stuck in one of the nine circles of Dante's Inferno. It made doing your taxes seem like fun. But both these challenges can be sensibly addressed. Start-up costs would come down if more plants were being built. And the Department of Energy, apparently recognizing that new nuclear plants are needed to replace our nation's aging fleet, is now working with the industry to streamline the licensing process. Already more than half of all reactors have had to have their licenses extended. If we do nothing, our nuclear capacity will be decommissioned over the coming decades because of age. Considering the increasing need, that's unacceptable. Bottom line: On a number of fronts, as I hope I've shown, new nuclear simply makes sense.

Extreme Recycling Garbage piling up in landfills, choking the roadside, creating huge dead zones in the world's oceans . . . Talk about humanity's footprint. But if we tackle the problem head-on, this very heavy footprint can lead us on a new path toward sustainable energy.

Back in 1985 (that would be a quarter century ago, and counting), New York City approved a plan to build plants that would be able to convert city garbage into power-kind of like a new form of Dumpster diving. Were they effective? No way to know. The plants were never built; the city currently dumps all of its waste in other states. But hope springs eternal in the City That Never Sleeps, I guess, because a former sanitation commissioner, Norman Steisel, and a former director of sanitation policy, Benjamin Miller, are now urging that those plants be built at last. According to their research, burning the city's nonrecyclable garbage in waste-to-energy plants would provide energy for almost 150,000 households, thus saving almost three million barrels of oil. There's also, ironically, a potential political plus: This would be a powerful way for New Yorkers to thumb their noses at terrorists whose plots are being supported with our payments for Middle Eastern oil.

Then there's sewage, which we create in large volume. But if treated, sewage becomes sludge, which burns very efficiently. In a 2007 report, the EPA estimated that if treatment plants nationwide converted sewage into electricity, almost 350,000 households could be powered. In terms of the total emissions that could save, it would be like having almost half a million fewer cars on the road.

Offsh.o.r.e Drilling If you know me, you know that I firmly believe in a limited federal government (keep it simple) that we can depend on to do a few few things well. Very well. As President Lincoln said, "The role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves." Amen to that. things well. Very well. As President Lincoln said, "The role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves." Amen to that.

But now we're going to go into deep waters here, pun intended, because the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was a complex event that provoked complex challenges, both scientific and political. First off, let's not forget that the oil deep beneath those waters is precious and belongs to all of us. And the same goes for the fragile ecosystem of the nearby coast and offsh.o.r.e islands. The oil is there for us to use, but the beaches, wetlands, marshes, and estuaries, along with the plant and animal life they support, are definitely not there for us to destroy in the process. (Remember Roosevelt, the Iroquois, Reagan, and your own good sense.) Enter the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig operated by fuel giant BP and the resulting oil spill that devastated the surrounding ecosystem. Never has there been a more telling and relevant example of what can go wrong with offsh.o.r.e drilling. This area in the Gulf of Mexico typically provides 40 percent of the fish in America's food supply. After the spill, fishermen could not harvest the affected fish, which imperiled the local economy, not to mention the more than four hundred wildlife species that call the Gulf home.

So does this disaster make the case that deepwater drilling should be discontinued? No, it's somewhat more complicated than that. Consider the following factors: 1. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Interior Department, charged with oversight of the industry, did not mind the store. Corrupt and incompetent, it collected oil royalties while also supposedly enforcing safety and environmental regulations. Oil company workers were allowed to prepare their so-called government inspection reports in pencil, and then MMS, like a bunch of kindergarteners, traced over the "answers" in ink.2. BP and the government both demonstrated a shocking lack of foresight. Our government did not test essential systems like the blowout preventer that failed. BP did not have, as required in some other countries, a separate, remote-controlled shutoff switch in case that happened. Also, as is required in Canada for Arctic drilling, a relief well should have been drilled at the same time as the primary well.3. A fire boom can burn off 75,000 gallons of oil an hour, but it took the government about a week to get a single boom to the site, much less a number great enough to perhaps contain the spill far from sh.o.r.e. Similarly, there weren't enough containment and absorption booms to protect the sh.o.r.eline. According to Thad Allen, whom Obama put in charge of dealing with the catastrophe, the feds didn't "envision" ever having to lay boom all along the Gulf Coast at the same time. Seems to me that our government didn't envision much of anything except suns.h.i.+ne and lollipops.

It soon became clear to all of us, I believe, that BP was more focused on saving time and money than on saving lives and nature. Meanwhile, the response of the utterly inept Obama administration was a disaster that added to the disaster. Clearly not ready for prime time in a crisis, the president was long on photo ops and tough-sounding speechmaking but failed to take the actions that could have accelerated the saving of the Gulf Coast. Appalled by the delays and mistakes, I felt I was watching the equivalent of a major car pileup on the freeway with multiple injuries to which, instead of dispatching ambulances, fire trucks, and paramedics equipped with the "jaws of life," the authorities sent a vanload of personal-injury lawyers to pa.s.s out business cards and drum up some litigation!

Oil and Tears Don't Mix Some of you may remember that cla.s.sic TV public-service spot from the 1970s that featured a lone Indian, Iron Eyes Cody, as part of the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign. As he stands somberly beside the road, someone in a pa.s.sing car callously tosses out trash that lands at his feet. The close-up on his face reveals tears in his eyes. Simple but powerful.

As other powerful images of human-caused destruction flooded the airwaves after the BP spill, especially wildlife covered in thick coats of petroleum and beaches stained by oil slicks and tar b.a.l.l.s, I could almost picture Cody taking it all in. I could also imagine another nature lover on the scene, a man who could often be found about the White House grounds making notes on the birds inhabiting the trees there. I believe old "T.R." might shed a tear or two at the sight of a brown pelican struggling with the oil-soaked sand clumping in its feathers. After all, he used the power of the Oval Office to create fifty-one federal bird reserves, protecting many specific species, including, yes, the eastern brown pelican. I don't imagine Teddy weeping for long, though. Instead, I see him swiftly walking (softly, perhaps) to BP headquarters and pulling out that "big stick" he was known to use on occasion.

Sadly, we don't need to imagine either Iron Eyes Cody or Theodore Roosevelt shedding tears for the Gulf. Unforgettably, we saw over and over on TV news how coastal residents were shedding tears that were all too real. Crying over spilled milk, we're told, does not make sense. But a million gallons of oil a day? That's another matter entirely.

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's former chief of staff, is fond of saying, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." Whatever his political reasons might be for saying this, a case can be made for looking for whatever silver lining can be found in this migrating cloud of oil. Right now, that might seem wishful thinking or downright impossible. But perhaps the nation has been shocked enough by the spill, the most serious environmental disaster we've ever suffered, to reevaluate our foolish dependence of fossil fuels, heighten our environmental awareness, redefine the role we expect government to play, and become inspired to create the role we should play ourselves.

So how to proceed? First, as I suggested earlier in this chapter, we should aggressively pursue research and development of alternative sources of energy. Second, we should realistically understand that this vast, oil-dependent nation cannot be freed from the use of fossil fuels by the next election cycle. (In other words, my "green" friends, don't even bother putting that in your platform just yet.) What we can and must start doing, however, is accelerating a transition from dependence on foreign foreign to dependence on to dependence on domestic domestic oil. As it stands now, we are virtual slaves to oil-producing nations in the Middle East whose leaders delight in becoming obscenely wealthy at our expense. This dependence, to say the least, is not necessary to our survival, since we have within our own borders far more oil reserves than the average American thinks. If we made the right choices, we could use these resources to slake our thirst for oil for generations to come. So why don't we? Well, unfortunately, much of our reserves lie beneath the sea offsh.o.r.e or in areas where drilling, according to many environmentalists, would be unacceptable because of possible damage to the surrounding area. That's a tough battle, but it must be resolved. oil. As it stands now, we are virtual slaves to oil-producing nations in the Middle East whose leaders delight in becoming obscenely wealthy at our expense. This dependence, to say the least, is not necessary to our survival, since we have within our own borders far more oil reserves than the average American thinks. If we made the right choices, we could use these resources to slake our thirst for oil for generations to come. So why don't we? Well, unfortunately, much of our reserves lie beneath the sea offsh.o.r.e or in areas where drilling, according to many environmentalists, would be unacceptable because of possible damage to the surrounding area. That's a tough battle, but it must be resolved.

For one thing, the issue is not just about energy; our national security is also deeply involved-in ways that might not be readily apparent. Once in a while, you read something so shocking that it forces you to sit up and say, "Whoa, this is outrageous; this is insane!" That's exactly what I did when I read Thomas Friedman's New York Times New York Times column on July 24, 2010. He reported that retired Brigadier General Steve Anderson, once General Petraeus's senior logistician in Iraq, explained that "over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts." Battlefield casualties, even accidents, are inevitable in war, but I'd hate to be the father of a soldier killed under these easily preventable circ.u.mstances. column on July 24, 2010. He reported that retired Brigadier General Steve Anderson, once General Petraeus's senior logistician in Iraq, explained that "over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts." Battlefield casualties, even accidents, are inevitable in war, but I'd hate to be the father of a soldier killed under these easily preventable circ.u.mstances.

The story is even more heartbreaking when you consider that our military, while using some 130 million barrels of oil each year, is concerned about the future availability of oil supplies. Because the national-security implications are obvious, the military has made a priority of minimizing its oil dependency by researching other fuel for use in its aircraft and vehicles. To take one promising example of an alternative fuel, a.n.a.lysts have become interested in the potential of algae. Because it basically requires only flat land and sunlight, it should be relatively easy to produce at our bases here and overseas or even out in the field.

And while we can be horrified by the oil usage-related unnecessary deaths reported by Friedman, let's not forget about the national-security threat that we face every day because of our dependence on foreign oil. Countries, like Saudi Arabia, that make billions from us like to showcase glittering new public works projects and the like. But behind the walls they are also funding the very schools, or madra.s.sas, that recruit, radicalize, and then train impressionable children for what is essentially the Future Terrorists of the World Club. At the same time, their so-called charities funnel money to terror cells. How can we, for even a moment, let ourselves forget this evil connection? It is expensive enough to pay for our side in the war on terror; we have to stop paying for both sides. In short, oil has not just shaped our foreign policy over the years; it has basically deformed it.

Thinking Outside the Barrel Perhaps more benign, but no less troubling for our economy is the well-known law of supply and demand as demonstrated by the stunning growth of China in the last few years. It probably seems like a good thing to many that the communist country has been slowly opening doors in carefully limited ways to free-market capitalism. As we've been saying for hundreds of years in the West, capitalism works! But guess what? As the ancient Chinese proverb says, "Be careful what you wish for."

One consequence is that the energy demands of China's population of 1.3 billion (and counting) are becoming increasingly voracious. Add to that the similarly mounting demands of industrializing India and other developing countries. It has been projected that the global demand for energy will triple by 2050. Where on earth, in a manner of speaking, will this supply come from, and what will it cost? Will the United States have to haggle over the counter with countries that are growing powerful and wealthy and do not necessarily have our best interests at heart? This would not be pretty.

This is the simple truth: Our current economic prosperity and superpower status depend upon readily available, reasonably priced energy. It logically follows that the future belongs to countries that have adequate, reliable sources of energy under their certain control at prices that won't impoverish them.

When prices at the pump soar, people wring their hands; when they drop, most of us return merrily to our wasteful habits. What is not often discussed is that, in addition to the direct cost of oil-related products like gasoline and heating oil for the home, each price fluctuation affects indirect costs. The price of food is affected, for example, since energy is required to produce and s.h.i.+p most items. America has become so prosperous and powerful in part because our fuel, our food, and many other necessities have historically been relatively cheap. As a result, we've been able to invest and spend our money on other things. If those days end, our standard of living will be at great risk.

Unfortunately, we now take our good fortune for granted. The richer we've become, the more wasteful. Our parents and grandparents, literally believing in "waste not, want not," compulsively turned off lights and turned down thermostats. Do you? Used to cheap commodities, our society seems to live by the creed "Why not waste? We'll never want." For the moment, our individual wallets may be able to afford our profligate ways, even during this time of recession, but our national security and hope for long-term prosperity do not have that kind of economic cus.h.i.+on.

After 9/11, instead of saying, "Go shopping," President Bush should have advised, "Cut your energy consumption. Conservation is patriotism." A decade later, we can and should do just that. If we make a conscious and conscientious effort, serious and substantial conservation can happen today, not years from now. Will this country necessarily have to pay more for energy as worldwide demand rises? Not if we all recognize that conservation is the one way to pay less.

Put another way, we have to decide what energy will represent for the United States in the twenty-first century: a path to our decline or to our continued dominance? Right now, there is a five-trillion-dollar market for energy worldwide. Every minute, the world produces sixty thousand barrels of oil and consuming countries spend four million dollars on that oil. At nineteen million barrels a day, we are by far the biggest consumer, importing two-thirds of that total. China is second at about nine million barrels. But we ain't seen nothing yet, in terms of either the demand for oil or the concomitant hunger for other energy sources.

But that's where opportunity lies. We can make ourselves both richer by selling new energy technology at home and abroad and more secure by creating alternatives to oil. The potential rewards are tremendous for those who can think outside the barrel. Innovation has always been an American specialty, what we have always done better than anyone else. We meet the challenges; we win the races.

And energy entrepreneurs, encouraged by the enormous market size and profit potential, do not not need a.s.sistance and encouragement from the federal government (meaning you, the taxpayer). The feds have quite enough problems to deal with and pay for, I think. Just let the market and consumers decide what makes sense. need a.s.sistance and encouragement from the federal government (meaning you, the taxpayer). The feds have quite enough problems to deal with and pay for, I think. Just let the market and consumers decide what makes sense.

I agree with Stuart Butler and Kim Holmes, who addressed this subject in an article for the Heritage Foundation, "Twelve Principles to Guide U. S. Energy Policy": There are many guesses as to what the "new oil" might be, but no one knows for certain-least of all, the federal government. . . . The best way to secure abundant energy sources in the future is to encourage entrepreneurs to discover them, not for agencies and congressional committees to try to pick winners with directed research, regulations, mandates, and subsidies.

On the other hand, as these writers go on to explain, there may well be good reasons for the government to put in place a regulatory system "that creates the best climate for private-sector innovation." They suggest tax-free enterprise zones that would give a new company seven years of breathing room in which to develop and grow. That seems a fair trade-off to me.

The Energy Race During the cold war, America hustled frantically into the s.p.a.ce race after the Soviet Union stunned the world with the launch of the firstever satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. We were caught napping; we put the pedal to the metal. And so, a little over a decade later, we won by becoming the first country to put a man on the moon. Why was it so important to outpace the Russians? Some people still don't get it, but the victory was important on two fronts: America produced amazing new technologies in order to win the contest, and we also a.s.serted our place as the dominant force in the global economy.

Today, without quite so much fanfare and public understanding, we are engaged in a very similar race, an energy race with China. As her control over the world's resources grows exponentially, we face a simple question: In a decade, will we have won this critically important race? Will we again, in other words, produce amazing new technologies in order to win and also prove ourselves still the dominant force in the global economy? Well, here's the simple answer: No, unless we make a priority of unapologetically committing our nation to being second to no other in the creation and use of renewable, reliable, environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and domestically produced energy. I make no apologies for arguing that to do so we need to return to being unabashedly American and much less "globalist" in our national character. Cooperate with other nations of the world, when it makes sense? Of course we should cooperate, but never capitulate. Letting ourselves lose the energy race would be, undoubtedly, a form of capitulation.

I believe that's what David Pumphrey, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, meant when he wrote, "There is little doubt that China's growing consumption changes what ability we have to control our own destiny within global energy markets." Translation: When China becomes a huge energy customer able to pay whatever the market demands, it will jeopardize the ability of the United States to retain its position as an unchallenged superpower.

Here are some specific hints of what's likely to come. Just recently, in 2009, China outpaced us as the country that uses the most energy, 2.25 billion tons of oil equivalent (meaning the total of all sources of energy in play) versus our 2.17 billion. For the hundred years before that, the United States annually used more energy than any other country. Not surprisingly, that period coincided with our becoming the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world. This milestone is even more significant, and startling, when you consider that just a decade ago China used only half as much energy as we did.

But the entire picture is a little more complex. On a per-capita basis, we still use five times as much energy as the Chinese. But as more of them begin to demand the kinds of high-energy products that we take for granted-cars and trucks, large appliances like dishwashers and was.h.i.+ng machines, central heating and air-conditioning in homes, workplaces, and shopping malls-the result could be a level of control over the world's resources that could grow to unimaginable heights.

Already the astonis.h.i.+ngly speedy switch from bicycles to automobiles in China has produced another milestone: In the first six months of 2010, the American automaker General Motors sold more cars there than here at home. Even though the company has been doing business there only since 1997, China now represents 25 percent of all its sales throughout the world. Remember, the federal government spent fifty billion dollars of your money to bail GM out (and keep the a.s.sembly lines rolling). By the way, in a somewhat similar vein, the feds gave $150 million to the Koreans to make batteries for the muchheralded Volt. What's up with that? Why aren't we producing those batteries? I mean, have I missed something, and workers in the Midwest are overemployed now? This is just another example to prove that the current tax structure and rigid regulation of the development of new technologies have combined to thwart our efforts here, while the Chinese are going full throttle in their ambition to become the world's number one economy.

Back to the energy race: China is a major producer of battery technology for cars and is also forging ahead to dominate the market in all kinds of renewable energy. As we keep seeing, the upward curve of development is steep: In 1999, the country produced merely one out of every hundred solar panels manufactured worldwide, but by 2008 it was making one in three, and it now exports more panels than anyone else. On another front, in 2009 China became the world's largest producer of wind turbines, pa.s.sing Denmark, Germany, Spain, and (you guessed it) the United States.

Rest a.s.sured that China's motivation in this energy revolution is economic, not environmental. It's all about producing jobs and ama.s.sing money, not about saving polar bears or rain forests. The Chinese leaders believe that this is their moment to lift their people out of poverty while also increasing their world stature both economically and militarily.

Project Independence One possible consequence of the rise of China for America was explained in early 2010 by Keith Bradsher, chief Hong Kong correspondent for the New York Times New York Times: "These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines, and other gear manufactured in China." That sounds to me like a trade we definitely don't want to make. Instead, we should trade our current situation for complete energy independence.

In fact, President Richard Nixon set out the guidelines for just such a goal back in 1973. His initiative, known as Project Independence, aimed for national energy independence by 1980, or about thirty years ago. Boy, did that not happen. Back then, we imported about 20 percent of our oil; now, as I pointed out earlier, it is almost 70 percent, at a cost of one billion dollars a day. Unfortunately, the politics of "right now" blew away the principle of protecting subsequent generations. Instant Gratification 101: When the oil-producing countries eased up on prices, we eased up on the urgency.

Since Nixon, every other president, whether Democrat or Republican, has urged us toward energy independence. So why has each one, including Obama, failed so far? Former CIA director James Woolsey summed it up in one colorful sentence in the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal on April 15, 2010: "OPEC sets oil's price at a level that exploits our addiction, but it is generally not high enough for long enough that we go cold turkey." You certainly know exactly what he means. Time after time, the alarms over Middle Eastern oil have sounded in the form of price increases and supply shortages. But instead of heeding these wake-up calls, we've always rolled over and gone back to sleep. on April 15, 2010: "OPEC sets oil's price at a level that exploits our addiction, but it is generally not high enough for long enough that we go cold turkey." You certainly know exactly what he means. Time after time, the alarms over Middle Eastern oil have sounded in the form of price increases and supply shortages. But instead of heeding these wake-up calls, we've always rolled over and gone back to sleep.

A Natural Bridge to the Future Aside from the other energy alternatives I've talked about here, there are exciting new possibilities in natural gas and clean coal. President Obama dismisses natural gas, as he does oil and coal, as just another fossil fuel to be shunned rather than embraced. But not all fossil fuels are the same. Natural gas releases half as much carbon as coal and is much cleaner than oil. It is also versatile, capable of being used to create electricity, fly planes, power cars and trucks, and heat our homes.

Moreover, huge quant.i.ties of natural gas have recently been uncovered in shale thanks to horizontal-drilling technologies. Consequently, the projection of American gas reserves was 60 percent higher in 2008 than in 2004, suggesting that we have enough to last almost a century. At the same time, as oil has become more expensive, gas has gone down in price.

For all of these reasons, a recent MIT study predicted that natural gas will provide from 20 percent to 40 percent of our energy over the next thirty years or so. As with every other resource, there are challenges, and we can't let the exploration companies have unrestricted free rein, since careful attention must be paid to any pollution of adjacent water supplies and other potential environmental impacts caused by the hydraulic fracturing that is used to release the gas.

But this improved technique for capturing gas has significant strategic implications, starting with bad news for the likes of Russia and Iran. Prior to the discovery of the potential of our beds of shale nationwide, those two countries were believed to control more than half of the world's natural gas. Now there won't be the expected demand for access to their supplies, meaning less wealth and power for them from this particular resource.

It's not likely that natural gas will turn out to be the "forever" solution, but it will be useful as a transition or bridge fuel. That is recognized and admitted even by those who are almost single-mindedly pus.h.i.+ng for renewables. In other words, if we're sensible, we can use natural gas to buy us the time we need to achieve the long-term goal of making alternative energy both cheaper and more practical.

During that time, we can work to make clean coal a reality by perfecting carbon capture and storage in an economically feasible way. Nature has given us 30 percent of the world's coal, so we would be foolish to ignore the potential of this resource. While we've been leading in the race to produce clean coal, our victory is by no means a.s.sured.

Finally, we have to continue developing more effective storage systems for wind power. Who can catch the wind? America can. Because wind is intermittent, sometimes producing more power than is needed right away, it becomes unreliable when that power is wasted or not strong enough. Promising projects include creating storage batteries that adjust the flow of the power, with computers keeping the batteries half charged as the wind picks up or dies down. Also, there is research on other possible storage systems, such as those using flywheels or compressed air.

Throughout this chapter, always mindful of Teddy as that thoughtful and creative student of nature and its relations.h.i.+p to humankind, I've been working with the underlying theme that we Americans must do three things to preserve our freedoms: feed ourselves, fuel ourselves, and fight for ourselves (that is, we have to manufacture our own weapons of defense). Whenever we have to depend on foreign sources for any of the three, we have in effect outsourced our freedoms, because other countries might not always be friendly to us and our goals.

Never should we trade away our independence-no matter what form it comes in. Not ever.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors We Need Immigration Reform That Works

The notion of America as a great "melting pot" goes all the way back to at least the 1780s, when it was used to describe a young country in which various cultures and ethnicities could "melt together" into a more h.o.m.ogeneous whole. Somewhere along about the 1970s, proponents of multiculturalism started chafing at the idea that cultural ident.i.ties might be lost in a melting pot and began favoring the "salad bowl" concept, where disparate elements mix but still remain unique. Quibbling over metaphors, perhaps, but whether you prefer the melting pot or the salad bowl vision of America, one thing is certain: Ours is a nation of immigrants. If you don't believe me, ask a Native American sometime. Most of our family trees (mine, for instance) felt the spray of salt.w.a.ter at some point, as our forefathers crossed oceans to seek out a better life in a new land called America.

But the important thing to remember, whether you prefer one metaphor over another, is that in both cases we're talking about working from measured ingredients-coordinated, controlled, legal immigration, which has literally helped make America the country it is today. And immigrants continue to make important contributions. For instance, almost half of Silicon Valley's venture capital-funded start-ups were cofounded by immigrants. If you'd seen a six-year-old Russian boy entering the United States in 1979, could you have imagined he would one day grow up to cofound Google and become one of the wealthiest men in the world, creating twenty thousand high-tech jobs in the process? No one did, but that's exactly what happened in the case of Sergey Brin. Immigrants often bring a unique perspective and are motivated to match with hard work the many opportunities America has to offer-and that in itself is the very nature of the American dream. We're all the better for it.

But most of today's illegal immigrants bear little resemblance to their predecessors from previous generations. We can no more fault a man or woman for wanting to live in the United States than we can fault our own forefathers who sought a better future here. However, when our forefathers came to America, it was to be Americans-to live here and become a part of the fabric of this great country. In too many cases, illegal border crossers have no intention or desire to spend their lives in America but are coming simply for economic gain, to make money to send back to their families in Mexico or Central America. This creates a shadow culture living "off the grid," never truly putting down roots in this country.

It's all too easy to view illegal immigration as a battle between "us and them." The toll this issue is taking on our people can be seen in the faces of those protesting both sides of the issue. The debate has become a powder keg nearing a flash point in some areas of the Southwest. Images on television of Anglos and Latinos screaming in each other's faces bear too close a resemblance to ugly scenes from the American civil rights movement for my comfort. As president, George W. Bush said something I will always remember: "We cannot build a unified country by inciting the people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value, no matter what their citizens.h.i.+p papers say."

When they live their lives in fear of being discovered, illegals neither fully benefit from nor contribute to society. One example would be an alien afraid to report a crime for fear of being arrested himself. Or the case Tom Brokaw doc.u.mented of a family of illegal aliens who, when struck by the stomach flu, bought penicillin without a prescription from a local meat market, afraid to visit a clinic or hospital. The uncle nervously guessed at an appropriate injection amount for his two-year-old niece. This is not the American dream; America is not a third-world country, but this shadow America might as well be one.

It's time to stop accepting illegal immigration as a necessary evil. One attorney who defended a large food processor in an immigration case commented, "If we didn't have immigrant labor in this country we'd all die of scurvy, because no one would pick an orange." I refuse to lean on this crutch. If we have jobs in this country that only the most desperate souls will take, for less than a living wage, that's a wage problem, not an immigration problem, and we need to deal with it as such. Other employers will tell you we've bred a generation of ent.i.tled kids who think they're "too good" to work summers digging a ditch on a construction site or was.h.i.+ng dishes at a restaurant. Here again, that's a parenting problem, not an illegal immigration problem.

If we successfully stem the tide of illegal workers in America and then come to the conclusion that there are workforce needs we cannot fulfill domestically, then we can address those needs by upping the quota of low-skilled workers we allow to immigrate legally or by increasing the number of temporary work visas to accommodate seasonal labor or whatever the specific workforce need may be. But turning a blind eye to entire industries built on illegal immigrant labor is no answer. It may seem cheap in the picking, but that's a bushel of fruit that comes with a heavy cost in the larger scheme of things.

We need to get our own house in order and stop accepting that we can build an economy on the backs of illegal immigrants living in a shadow society. That's not an economy; it's a delusion. So let's be clear: Wanting to secure our border with Mexico isn't about xenophobia or racism or a belief that America is an exclusive club for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants or anything of the sort-it's about enforcing the law. And the law has a purpose: to make our country stronger and safer for everyone. Legal immigration makes our country stronger, while illegal immigration could prove to be our undoing.

No More Amnesty In his major speech on immigration at American University on July 1, 2010, President Obama once again, just as he did with ObamaCare, tried to cram something down our throats that we don't want and that is wrong for our country-amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In his speech, he blamed Arizona for pa.s.sing a controversial anti- illegal immigration law, and he blamed Republicans for supporting it. "Unfortunately, reform has been held hostage to political posturing and special interest wrangling," he said. No, he had it backward-securing the border has been held hostage to ideas like amnesty; it has been held hostage to political posturing.

"States like Arizona have decided to take matters into their own hands," Obama said. But why did they take matters into their own hands? The job of the federal government is to define define and and defend defend our borders. We can't be free if we aren't safe, and we aren't safe if our boundaries are ignored routinely by those without respect for our laws. Wasn't it only because the federal government threw up its hands and refused to do its job that Arizona decided to take matters into its own hands? President Obama called the Arizona law "ill conceived" when his own amnesty plans were ill conceived and contrary to the will of the people. our borders. We can't be free if we aren't safe, and we aren't safe if our boundaries are ignored routinely by those without respect for our laws. Wasn't it only because the federal government threw up its hands and refused to do its job that Arizona decided to take matters into its own hands? President Obama called the Arizona law "ill conceived" when his own amnesty plans were ill conceived and contrary to the will of the people.

The American people have been burned by the failed immigration "reforms" of 1965 and 1986, which didn't seal our border and only made the problem worse. Amnesty doesn't just reward those who have broken our laws; it encourages more people to come. If we don't take our own laws seriously, why should those who want to come here? Having been duped before, the American people loudly and angrily rejected yet another amnesty bill when it was on the table in 2007-Congress got an earful and quickly backed off.