During Questar CEO Keith Rattie’s April, 2009, address at Utah Valley University, he laid out seven suggestions for addressing the energy and environmental challenges facing the world in general and the United States in particular.
The first three invite little controversy: Rattie says we must improve energy efficiency, stop wasting energy, and find ways to conserve energy. Whether in our daily purchase decisions or our national policy choices, we can all do more with what we’ve got.
His fourth suggestion, that we “rethink our irrational fear of nuclear power,” asks only that we separate emotional responses from the debate. Nuclear power indeed presents dangers, but he feels that the benefits justify whatever effort we must expend to manage the risks.
“Fifth, we need to embrace one of the key recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – substitute low-carbon natural gas for higher-carbon coal and oil.” As we pointed out in Part 1 of this series, new technology for extracting natural gas from shale makes it possible to tap vast resources right here in the United States. This means we should be able to significantly increase our use of natural gas without causing untenable price increases.
Rattie’s sixth observation was that young people must focus on creating new technology rather than waiting for it. “Just one example: there’s no such thing as ‘clean’ coal. But given America and the world’s dependence on coal for electric generation, we need to fund R&D aimed at capturing and storing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants.” As someone familiar with the challenges and costs associated with storing natural gas underground, Rattie says that carbon sequestration “will be hugely expensive and it’ll take decades to implement on any meaningful scale.” As such, we’ll need our best talent working on the problem.
Rattie’s seventh point boldly represents the kind of candid conversation rarely achieved in our politically correct culture: “It’s time to have an honest discussion about alternative responses to global warming [other] than what will likely be a futile attempt to eliminate CO2 emissions related to fossil fuel use.” We have heard many of the potential horrors of global warming, including the flooding of coastal population centers. Do we really know in what ways global warming might improve life by exposing formerly frozen croplands? Do we really know whether the costs of fighting global warming might harm society more than the costs and effort of adapting to a changing climate?
Rattie doesn’t claim to have the answers, but believes we must broaden the questions and seek out the incremental, short-term opportunities to pollute less, import less oil, and methodically search for solutions to the world’s ever-growing need for energy.
In Part 4, we’ll take a look at how American energy maverick T. Boone Pickens is trying to reach these goals.