Fuel Crisis Hot Topic at Political Conventions
Last week many of us watched the Democratic National Convention and this week the Republican National Convention, both to nominate their respective party’s candidate for President and Vice-President of the United States.
There were record numbers of people at the conventions and record numbers of people who watched on TV. Lawmaker after lawmaker gave speeches about all of the issues that need to be addressed, changed, rearranged, fixed and overcome in this country and around the world – sooner rather than later.
One of the issues that was brought up time and again was the fuel crisis. Though it is a bad situation, it is good news that the topic was noteworthy in speech after speech. It means that at least there is acknowledgement of the problem even if there isn’t agreement by lawmakers for the solution.
There are obviously a lot of ideas swirling around as to how to fix the problem. One of the main ideas is that it is time to become less dependent upon – or independent of – foreign oil. This is not a new idea. We’ve been hearing it on and off since the fuel shortages of the 70’s and 80’s, but this is the first time in recent history that everyone agrees that this dependence must change somehow.
Science and research have brought us many new alternatives since the 1980’s and there is the opportunity in this current crisis to explore a variety of ways to hit the fuel crisis head on, long term and once and for all.
In watching the conventions it was obvious that this issue was vital and that with some forethought, direction and actual study and communication across party lines, across ideologies, across education and background, there is enough fuel and energy from enough sources to make sure that it is used wisely and distributed so that everyone has what they need.
There are far-reaching implications to using some of the various sources of fuel that were mentioned including solar energy, wind energy, plant energy, nuclear energy, coal, oil and more. With the right balance, not only could the fuel crisis be solved once and for all, but it might just help the environment as well.
Now that we have the attention of lawmakers who were willing to speak about the issue on international TV, that is a start. It’s time for them to move forward and start really speaking to the experts and to each other and come up with a workable solution.