Be The Difference: Blog

This appeared as an op-ed commentary in the Salt Lake Tribune, July 4, 2008

The Real Energy Minutemen

Senator Orrin Hatch ("Delegation Slams Oil-Shale Moratorium," SL Tribune, 7/2/08) suggests that oil shale companies are our energy Minutemen, and Senator Bob Bennett believes that it is "malicious" of congress to keep these guardians from their appointed task. I think Senator Hatch needs a history lesson and Senator Bennett a better dictionary.

America's Minutemen were our defenders on the front line. Oil shale development is front line only as a means of destroying Utah's remaining wild land, for oil shale development will involve the destruction of Utah land on a colossal scale.

To what end? Even with development of oil shale, the U.S. does not have the capacity to significantly influence the price of oil on the global market. We're simply too small a player.

The true front line in the energy battle is not oil or any other fossil fuel. These are the modality of the past, and every attempt to prop up a system based on fossil fuels is a rear-guard action. The front line is renewable energy, and the Minutemen are those people who are working, in spite of backward-looking politicians such as Senators Bennett and Hatch, toward refashioning American society along sustainable lines. These people, like the men of Concord and Lexington, are revolutionaries.

There's nothing revolutionary about oil shale. A revolution is a new beginning. Solar power would be a new beginning. Wind and geothermal energy would be new beginnings. Fossil fuels are a dead end. They're a dead end quite literally in being the means by which we are driving the planet toward environmental catastrophe. They are also the means by which we here in SLC are driving ourselves to death through pneumonia, asthma, heart disease, low birth weight, and autism. One in 79 Utah boys is born with autism, the leading suspected cause of which is environmental mercury. And the leading source of environmental mercury is coal. We don't need more of this fossil fuel monopoly. We need out of it, as Americans in 1776 needed out of England's mercantile monopoly.

Our true Minutemen are engineers like Arjun Makhijani, author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free, a roadmap for making America independent from fossil fuels and nuclear power by mid-century.

Our true Minutemen are companies like Nanosolar, creating next-generation solar cells that can be produced at a fraction of today's prices, making solar accessible to every American.

Our true Minutemen are citizens who belong to organizations like Salt Lake's own Post-Carbon Salt Lake, who make conservation the foundation for daily living.

Our true Minutemen are true conservatives. They value self-reliance and independence above all else. They see that there is no possible way for America to be energy-independent as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels. Under no realistic scenario can oil shale contribute meaningfully to America's independence from foreign oil and therefore foreign influence.

America's true energy Minutemen are those who are bold enough to tell foreign kings that we want to be rid of them. I want to be free of Saudi Arabia. I want to be free of Iran. I want to be free of Russia. I want to be free of the necessity, if such it is, of a major war in the Middle East every decade to ensure our access to oil. Oil shale will not give me this independence. Solar cells from Silicon Valley will. A viable electric car produced in Detroit will. Wind power produced here in Utah will.

Senator Hatch, I'm an energy Minuteman and you are one of the obstacles on my path to independence. It's time you got out of my way.

Ed Firmage, Jr.