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From Stanwood to D.C., making energy sense

by REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso
published in the Seattle Times on June 15, 2005

One of the biggest draws at the recent Shoreline Renewable Energy Fair was the guy from Stanwood with his wood-powered pickup truck.

The owner figures he can get 1 mile for every pound of wood pellets he shovels in. Assuming gas prices of $2.25 per gallon, that's roughly equivalent to 30 miles per gallon. Not bad for a pickup. What was striking about the truck was not that it would serve as a practical alternative for most people. As the owner himself says in his promotional flier, "It's high-maintenance, inconvenient, low power, filthy, and probably illegal."

Much of the truck bed is taken up by the high-temperature furnace that turns wood pellets into a combustible gas, which is then piped to the engine. If you want a spacious truck bed for carrying all your stuff, or if you prefer driving a stylish sedan, well, this probably isn't the vehicle for you.

What was striking, instead, was the creativity that went into designing and making the thing. The truck was the product of a tinkering gadget builder, the sort of down-home, can-do innovator who has been building problem-solving machinery since America's earliest days.

The wood-powered truck was a good reminder that we Americans can figure out ways to get off the foreign oil kick and reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause global warming. All we need is inspiring leadership that stirs our country's creative juices and accelerates the transition to smarter ways of producing and using energy.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order setting ambitious targets for reducing the state's emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Meeting the targets won't be easy, but Schwarzenegger's action stands in striking contrast to the head-in-the-sand attitude about global warming that prevails in the other Washington.

Leadership starts with setting the right tone. Imagine the impact if President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and repeated four key sentences from the speech Schwarzenegger gave before signing his executive order: "I say the debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat. And we know the time for action is now."

With those four sentences, Bush would provide a dose of political will that the other Washington sorely needs to confront the serious energy-related risks our nation faces, from high prices to rising imports to global warming.

Bush would unleash a torrent of innovation from American scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who can invent and market the energy solutions our nation needs.

Bush would bring new economic hope to rural America, which can grow biofuels to replace fossil fuels. He would open the door to new opportunities for the nation's manufacturing centers, which can build the fuel cells, batteries, wind turbines and solar cells that will produce clean energy that is made in the U.S.A.

Washington's information-technology industries would get a big piece of the action producing software for operating advanced energy technologies and upgrading the nation's stressed electric-power grid.

Bush would start ramping down our strategically dangerous dependence on oil, the production of which will be increasingly concentrated in the unstable Middle East in the coming decades.

Bush would begin repairing and strengthening a global energy system that is under unprecedented stress from rising demand, unreliable supplies and the peaking of conventional oil production that many energy experts believe is close at hand.

Bush would enhance America's standing in the world, acquiring for our nation a larger stock of moral and political capital that would be vital for repairing fractured alliances, winning respectful new friends and, together, facing down the many scourges menacing modern civilization.

And Bush would position himself as a worthy successor to Theodore Roosevelt as a steward of our natural heritage.
Innovative Americans from sophisticated technology companies to a guy in Stanwood who built a wood-powered truck are waiting for the word. Mr. President, what do you say?