Why can’t we all agree that certain things must be done?
Keystone pipeline
I understand those who don’t want the Keystone pipeline for whatever reasons. At the same time we need to have the oil and the jobs that the pipeline will provide. So lets agree that we must be extremely careful while building and maintaining it. But build it we must.
We are not ready economically to change our primary energy source. While its true we have made great strides in renewable energy , its also true that most Americans are not in a position to do much more then they are already doing.
The Grid
We need to protect our utilities from natural causes and terrorist attacks.
As it sits now taking down our power grid is pretty simple. If a strong enough solar flare happens it could shut down power to the entire country. We have been lucky , so far that it has not happened before.We have zero control over the Sun, yet we still can protect ourselves from a solar flare. Its not hard to do, its just going to cost us a lot of money. The big question is do we want to pay upfront or would we rather wait until it goes dark and pay with both money and lives. That is of course, if we can recover from losing our power grid for more then 2 weeks. Think about the amount of money that would be lost if there was no power for anything on just the East Coast. Think about what happened and how much it cost during and after super storm Sandy.
At this point only a brave few in Congress are willing to go out on a limb and say that securing our grid is something that we must spend money on. While I understand that we are flat broke as a nation, the cost of not securing our grid is too dangerous for our Nation and looking at the bigger picture for the world. Lets face it our economy is tied very closely with the rest of the worlds.
Those are just two issues that we need to deal with right away. There are plenty of other issues that need to be addressed.