"Alternative Fuels"?

There is only one that is truly practical. And Greens hate it.

Our peace and prosperity, indeed our very lives, now depend on a continuous supply of energy. Yet most of us give very little thought to how this energy arrives where and when it is needed. Just as many children think that milk comes from the supermarket, many adults think no further about gasoline than that it comes from the service station. They may have heard that windmills, or underground heat sources, or sun rays may be developed to supply power, but they have no idea whether this is truly feasible. Nuclear power, meanwhile, is synonymous to much of the public with nuclear bombs, and thus death and destruction.

Opponents of energy-supply expansion have put the nation in a difficult position today. In California, for instance, they blocked new construction of all contemplated power plants over the last decade. They spread hysteria against nuclear power plants and succeeded in shutting down one near Sacramento and another near San Diego, thereby reducing California's power capacity while its population was rapidly increasing. They harshly criticized power companies of all sorts, and sullied public support for the industry. They set up unfulfillable expectations by hyping "alternative energy" sources. And they blocked access to U.S. oil and gas reserves that exist abundantly off the California coast, as well as in other parts of our country.

As a result, California's power companies could not keep up with the increased statewide demand for electricity, and were compelled to buy electric energy from plants in other states. Then petroleum and natural gas spiked in price. OPEC reduced its sales on world markets. And natural gas, in the face of sharply rising demand and little new exploration, increased in cost from an average of $2.20 to $6 per million BTUs within the last two years. That meant electric rates had to increase. Unfortunately, thanks to a foolishly incomplete deregulatory scheme, California's power companies could charge their customers only fees set by the state, while having to buy fuel and supplemental electric energy at market prices.

Consequently, California's power companies are facing bankruptcy. State residents must deal with brownouts, blackouts, and grave economic losses. Some industries, fearing loss of electricity for their plants, are reducing production--or scrambling to buy diesel electric generators, which emit far more pollutants per kilowatt-hour than standard power plants, particularly than the much-demonized nuclear units.

By virtue of alarmist environmental rhetoric and ill-informed media coverage, much of the public has been convinced that we're about to run out of fossil fuels. Actually, the U.S. is an energy-rich country. We have, for instance, the world's largest known coal reserves. It is true, however, that environmentalists are with each passing day making it more difficult to access our reserves.

In 1996, for instance, they succeeded in cutting us off from 68 billion tons of our cleanest coal reserves. Located in Utah, this coal is of a type sought by utility companies to satisfy the EPA's ever-rising requirements. It is worth more than $2.6 trillion after extraction, or more than $9,000 for each man, woman, and child in the United States. Even if all U.S. electric power plants were using coal, 68 billion tons could run them for more than 45 years at the present rate of consumption.