Need to Conserve is Still On

I never thought I would be so happy to see gas priced at $3.99 a gallon. After paying $4.49 a gallon just a few weeks ago, it feels like a good buy. It is amazing what a little market pressure can do to bring down consumption, increase supply and lower prices.

Market forces cannot only balance supply and demand against price; it can also make our environment greener. Just like in the ’70s when we had the first oil shock, business and industry learned very quickly how to be more efficient and use much less energy to save money. The byproduct was cleaner air.

Government mandates did not make us more energy efficient. Individuals and business on their own made rational decisions to save money by using less energy. People did not buy smaller cars because of government CAFE standards. They bought smaller, fuel-efficient cars because they saved money; and if companies in Detroit did not want to build them, they would buy them from someone else in the world who would.

This latest oil shock, which is now subsiding, also made us look at becoming more energy efficient. It did not take a government mandate for airlines to mothball their older, less fuel-efficient planes; it was the $5-a-gallon jet fuel that did it. It wasn’t a governmental mandate that made us consolidate auto trips, take the metro or get rid of the sport utility vehicle; $4.50 a gallon did it.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: Now that prices are dropping, the pressure is off to conserve. Wrong. Even at $3 a gallon, the average hard-working American will want to save money and conserve. High energy prices also helped tip us into a recession.

Ask any small-business owner who serves the public. Not many people can afford to go out to dinner after they just put $100 in their tank. People will adjust and consume less fuel so they can have money for discretionary spending.

I am not the first to say we need a new paradigm on environmentalism in this country. The old paradigm was to use government red tape and litigation to stop any new power-generating facilities, highway construction or new housing. The old paradigm wanted a centralized bureaucracy that thwarted personal liberty, destroyed good-paying jobs and worked to keep us gridlocked until we all agreed to take a bus.

Most Americans consider themselves “green,” but at $4 per gallon they want us to drill, drill, drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, offshore, anywhere. Most Americans want to protect the environment, but would be appalled to know almost every major solar energy project in the country is being stopped by litigation from the old-paradigm environmental groups saying they are bad for the environment. Solar energy bad? Please.

Billionaire businessman T. Boone Pickens is touting a plan for wind energy, yet windmill projects were killed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard because it might affect sailing. Even discussing the cleanest of all energy sources, nuclear power, makes old paradigm environmentalists go apoplectic.

The new paradigm for being green has to be growing the economy while keeping the environment healthy at the same time. The left would have you believe that any increase in the standard of living is a detriment to the environment, when in fact the opposite is true.

Travel around the world, and it is easy to see. Democratically controlled countries with strong economies have cleaner air, cleaner water and are more environmentally friendly. It takes a strong economy to promote a strong environment.

It is true we need some government regulation with regards to polluting the air and water. It would not be fair if one manufacturer dumped untreated water in our rivers to get a cost advantage over a competitor that cleaned the water it used. These external costs need to be paid by the ones polluting; not everyone else.

The American public has now been awakened to the whole energy equation. No longer are they going to let the old-paradigm environmentalists scare them. People want answers to problems, not scare tactics to stop progress.

This will be my last column for at least a few months. I have decided to run for City Council in Costa Mesa, and the Daily Pilot editors and I agree it would not be fair to continue writing during the campaign.

However, no matter how the race turns out in November, I hope to be back writing again.

Thank you all for your comments and critiques of this column. It has been a privilege to write it.