Overused but Apropos: US at Energy Tipping Point

May 11, 2008

Get in your car and you can feel it.  Pay your heating bill and you can feel it.  Go to the grocery store and you can feel it.  The moment has arrived.  The moment many environmentalists had predicated and most people (including economists) said would never come. 

It no longer takes any imagination to understand what the world would be like when oil demand catches supply, when increased gas prices drive up the cost of everything, when even hard core Hummer drivers see there may be better ways to get from point A to point B.

The unrelenting rise in the cost of each barrel of oil is raising the cost of almost everything in the US economy, products and services included.   Even abundant energy sources like coal, once thought to be price stable, are going up, as global demand for every type of energy climbs.

As my parents (and many parents before them told me), when the going gets tough, the tough get going.  More specifically, at a certain point (tipping or otherwise) the tough stop complaining and kick into action.  By most measures, we're at a juncture where many types of new energy are on the border of being economically superior to their fossil fuel competition.  But for the implementation costs, the switch would be a no brainer. 

Hence, the re-emergence of an old time rural American tradition: the barn raising.  Except now folks gather round one house to raise & install solar panels or wind turbines.  And they do it for coffee and donuts, or pizza and brewskis.  You get the idea.  And the other reason they help their neighbor for comparative peanuts, is because their neighbor then helps them a few months later.  In these new days, reciprocity beats viscosity.  Don't look to the heavens or the government to ease your pain on this one.  Get ready to help and be helped by your fellow citizens.

Photo courtesy of Therese Flanagan
www.thereseflanagan.com