Local Power Generation: the Truly Conservative Energy Solution

Roscoe Bartlett is the prototype of the quirky conservative. An article in Politico profiles the Maryland Republican, who served in Congress for 20 years before his seat was gerrymandered out of existence.

He has typical views for many in his party: limited government, pro-shutdown, hates Obamacare, etc. The article paints him as a survivalist living out in the boondocks, waiting for the day when the Russians detonate a nuclear weapon high above the United States, destroying our power and communications networks with EMP. He's got a composting toilet and a wood-fired stove.

The thing that caught my eye in the article was the picture of his cabin and the numerous solar panels surrounding it.

When you think about rugged individuals like Bartlett, you you conjure up images of farmers breaking the soil of the great prairie with horse-drawn plows, wind-swept plains, lone farmhouses with a windmill.

One of big arguments among conservatives is that our national debt is terrible. They infer this because they personal debt is terrible, and they equate the two. Another big argument is that big centralized control is bad, local control and personal responsibility are good.

Yet when it comes to energy, self-sufficiency and efficiency, conservatives suddenly flip-flop: they believe that we need a massive, centralized, top-down, multinational energy distribution network. One where we depend on oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, oligarchs in Russia, and rich American heirs to massive oil fortunes.

But because oil and gas are fungible commodities, their prices will always suffer from potentially catastrophic fluctuations. Even though we are producing more oil and gas in this country, if the world suddenly needs more oil, the price will go up everywhere, and our supply could be drained away to countries like China and India. That's due to the magic of the free market, which dictates that whoever has the money calls the shots. Just because your country produces gas and oil doesn't mean your citizens will get to keep it (just ask the Nigerians). The Keystone XL pipeline won't deliver oil to the United States, it'll deliver oil to shipping terminals in Louisiana, so that foreign countries can buy it up at prevailing world prices.

Conservatives have been sold a bill of goods on energy. The Kochs and other CEOs have conned them into believing that we need massive coal mines, thousands of oil and gas wells, coal-fired power plants that poison our forests and lakes with mercury and sulfuric acid, gigantic nuclear power plants that will store tons of toxic nuclear waste on site for the rest of eternity, all run by monstrous multinational corporations that have proved time and again that they need an equally large federal government watching closely over them (think BP oil spill in the Gulf, Massey Energy coal mine explosion, Exxon Valdez, etc., etc., etc.).

Solar and wind power can create a more localized, independent, efficient, stable and reliable power grid, both from an economic and energy standpoint. Transmitting power thousands of miles across power lines leads to massive losses due to resistance. Having solar panels and windmills dotted around the landscape, provides greater efficiency and reliability, more local power generation and control.

When the only sources of electricity were coal-fired power plants that belched filthy smoke it made sense to stick out in the middle of nowhere. But now that we have clean alternatives that can be installed pretty much anywhere, it makes sense to generate power locally.

As Roscoe Bartlett points out, our power grid is fragile. It needs to be redesigned to better handle local grass-roots power generation. It needs to be robust enough to withstand hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, heat waves and cold snaps. As new forms of localized energy generation are developed (perhaps fuel cell stacks fueled hydrogen or natural gas) they can be plugged into the new grid to provide greater stability and local control. The grid still needs to be national, because we'll always need to balance power generation and consumption, as well as sending power to areas that have been hit by catastrophe.

The weird thing is that conservatives and liberals have a lot of core principles in common. But they've just have been talked into thinking that everything they believe in is diametrically opposed by people who stand to profit. We need to cut through the BS and work together to accomplish things that all of us agree are in our national interest, and not stand in the way of the common good simply because the other guy proposed it first.