Julia Harte | A finger in the wind

Back in May, Penn committed to spend more on one crucial resource than any other university in the United States. Remember what it was?

Not oil. Not coffee. Not that finger food they serve at department functions.

Wind.

Before you roll your eyes, consider this: an average wind turbine - the kind used to generate commercial electricity - produces enough energy each year to offset three million pounds of carbon dioxide, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

That's the amount emitted by 150,000 gallons of gasoline, or approximately twelve trips across the country in a Boeing 747.

Penn isn't the first to have noticed the incredible potential of this technology. Britain just revealed a new nationwide renewable energy strategy, and The Guardian reported last weekend that "wind power is the key to this 'green industrial revolution'."

Government statistics, according to Greenpeace UK, have long shown that "more than a quarter of today's electricity consumption [in Britain] could be provided by wind power by 2025 - and that to do it would be both economic and practical."

But where others have embraced wind power technology, President Bush and his fellow conservatives remain as hostile toward those graceful turbines as Don Quixote was toward the windmills in Cervantes's novel.

Most right-wing politicians and oil company executives still labor under the deluded - indeed, quixotic - impression that we can continue running the country on petroleum well into the future.

How else to explain Bush's recent petition to Congress to open part of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, or to re-allow offshore oil drilling?

Bush claimed in a speech on June 18 that these measures would just be "short run" fixers, until we end our oil-dependence for real.

But research from the U.S. Energy Information Administration already indicates that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030," according to the department's website.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain supported Bush's call to allow offshore drilling, promising in a June 17 speech to "set forth a strategy to free America once and for all from our strategic dependence on foreign oil."

But most petroleum geologists are convinced that our ability to extract any oil from the earth is peaking, meaning that oil will be harvested at lower and lower rates from now on. Despite this reality, McCain hasn't yet announced an equally emphatic plan to free America once and for all from our strategic dependence on oil, period.

A day after Bush asked Congress to open the offshore drilling sites, it was reported that the four big Western oil companies are finalizing contracts that will restore their exclusive right to service oil fields in Iraq.

These companies -- ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, and BP - were last in Iraq in 1972, just before Saddam Hussein kicked them out of the country.

Let's pretend for a moment that their re-entry into the Iraqi oil market was a reasoned decision, made to help the Iraqi economy get back on its feet, and not, say, a motivation for going to war in Iraq in the first place.

Their aggressive grasp for Iraqi oil still speaks volumes more than any formal intent of "looking to alternative energy to help meet the world's demand," as BP declares on its website.

Oil companies function like any other business - they seek profitable investments. And if they've invested en masse in Iraq's petroleum reserves it's because they expect to keep selling petroleum for years to come.

As any energy analyst can tell you, only a combination of hybrid and electric vehicles, tighter energy-efficiency standards, solar panels, biofuels, and yes, wind turbines, can actually break our dependence on oil.

Penn is already decades ahead of our presidential administration and the oil companies on this issue. Hopefully, our patronage of wind power will help transform the power grid of our whole state. After all, in 2007, Pennsylvania had the fifth-largest percent growth in carbon emissions of any state.

And until the green industrial revolution arrives in this country, try to see the bright side of the four-dollar-gallon.

So far, according to the most recent issue of the journal Foreign Policy, the increased cost of gas has been linked to: fewer accidents, increased use of mass transit, shorter commutes, and even lower obesity rates.

Here's to a safer, cleaner, and leaner future.

Julia Harte is a rising College senior from Berkeley, C.A. Her e-mail is jharte@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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