Americans are spoiled by cheap gasoline. They scream about paying $4/gallon and both presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, are using this panic to get votes with energy plans that just won't work.

The truth is that a country that uses 1/4 of the world’s oil, but has less than 3 percent of its reserves, cannot drill its way to happiness at the gas pump and free itself from Arab oil. The only answer is to cut down use and to start in on serious programs of alternative fuels and energy sources. In Denmark, they have proved that this not only works, but that it creates jobs.

Gas in Denmark costs $10 a gallon. So, it is no surprise that rush hour traffic in the capitol, Copenhagen, is 50% bicycles. It means less traffic, less pollution and fewer overweight people. Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen says “The cure is not to reduce gas prices, but to raise them even higher to break the addiction to oil."

The 1973 OPEC oil embargo hit Denmark hard. 93% of their energy came from Middle East oil. They were forced to be creative and introduced energy-smart taxes that stimulated its own North Sea oil drilling and also gave birth to new energy companies like Vestas, the world’s biggest wind turbine company. Today, one-third of all wind turbines in the world come from Vestas Wind and 20% of Denmark's electricity comes from wind power. By comparison, in the USA only 1% comes from wind.

In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. This and other new industries, like the way they recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they burn their trash in central stations to provide home heating (there are almost no landfills in Denmark) is one of the reasons that unemployment in Denmark today is only 1.6 percent. In 1973 Denmark got 93 percent of its energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.

If only the USA could be as energy smart as Denmark! A 2007 study in the USA conducted by the Renewable Energy Policy Project and released by the Blue-Green Alliance (a team project of the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club) reported that getting just 20 percent of U.S. electricity from wind and solar power by 2020 would create 820,000 new high-wage jobs at more than 42,000 companies across the country!

This Month’S Puzzle

www.timtim.com/drawing.php?drawing=002047_Crossword-Puzzle-2

Tim Newlin
Creator of TimTim.com - Free Drawings for Classroom Use

» More Gazette articles...