The whole world really is in our hands. Now what are we going to do with it? Photo: dasolar.com
Is energy really an issue for parents? When you have kids, there’s so much to think about these days: shuttling them to school and soccer practice, keeping them away from junk food and moderating the amount of TV they watch or, if they have a cell phone, making sure that texting doesn’t take over from homework. No parent wants yet another problem to worry about.
But in the rush of urgent tasks today, every parent also imagines their kid’s future as a bright one, with lots of opportunity. And so we focus on SAT prep, college visits and career options. But for me, there’s one issue that will affect our children’s future much more than whether they go to State U or Stanford or whether they become an attorney or an anesthesiologist. It’s the issue of energy.
Energy runs our whole society by filling our gas tanks and keeping the lights on. But energy is now becoming a challenge again for the world and for America. Will we have enough of it? And will it be clean?
That seventies show
When I was a little girl in the late 1970s, the US faced an energy crisis from problems in the Middle East that spawned long lines at the gas pumps. As hard as those moments were for life-as-usual in the States, it made clear that our country was dangerously dependent on foreign energy sources. Everyone understood our predicament.
Soon oil, gas, and the concept of energy in general was on everybody’s lips, prompting President Carter to deliver a key White House address on energy. Some folks made fun of his suggestion to turn the thermostat down and put on a sweater instead. But it was sound advice, and pretty conservative, too. Americans had long taken pride in being frugal.
Perhaps even more forward thinking was Carter’s installation of solar panels on the White House itself.
Energy leadership
Carter wasn’t the first president to address the role of energy in our lives. And he wasn’t the last, as this hilarious Jon Stewart video shows. What Carter has in common with all those other presidents is that none of them took the issue to the real heart of his administration, leaving the US and Americans as vulnerable today as we were in the 70s.
We’re still dangerously dependent on foreign oil — and our domestic sources are running out fast even as our population increases and we’ve grown more energy reliant through our suburban way of life. That means supplies will get scarcer faster, and prices will rise.
Some folks mistakenly believe that our ongoing energy crisis means that we should try to get more of our oil from the dirtiest of energy sources — tar sands and oil shale — in essence, trying to solve a fossil fuel crisis with even worse fossil fuels. They think it makes a difference just because these are domestic “oil” sources. It’s the whole drill-baby-drill mantra, as if that was all there was to it. I can only guess that they’re not the ones whose kids have asthma or the attention deficit problems that have increased as we’ve added more mercury and other toxic poisons to our environment, many from burning coal and other fossil fuels.
Health aside, what about the economy? It’s tough enough for young people to get good jobs these days when they graduate college.
But no one seems to be thinking about what our kids will face as fuel supplies get tight in the future and prices go back up. With many families still tucked into cozy suburban cul-de-sacs that require a car drive to get to work, school and church, and even to pick up a quart of milk, pain at the pump is sure to strain family budgets even further, in some cases, to the limit.
Where are we headed?
Those who argue that exploiting the dirtiest fossil fuels is the solution conveniently leave out the implications of global warming through increased fossil fuel use. They also leave out the undeniably dangerous accumulation of pollution in our air, waterways, and soil. What kind of life will we live on a choking, toxic planet?
In my worst moments, I honestly think that our society — and we as individuals — don’t really care about our kids’ futures very much. In those terrible moments I think, “We’re throwing the next generation to the wolves and as long as we have our SUVs, fancy vacations, and newest iGadget, that’s all that matters.”
Fortunately those are just my bad moments.
What I really know is that most of us just aren’t aware of the relationship between energy and our quality of life, energy and the economy, and energy and consumerism. We hear the words, “fossil fuels are a finite resource” but we honestly can’t picture them running so low or becoming so expensive to threaten the patterns of our daily lives. We don’t think that pollution will get so bad that only those who can afford oxygen tanks and fancy water filtration devices will survive, for whatever life that would be.
So we just keep on keeping on, never thinking it will affect us, much less our kids.
But oh, it will.
And I ask you to imagine what kind of world these kids will have, and their kids will have, when the powerful but deadly fossil fuels effectively run out (are unaffordable) and we’ve done nothing significant to put replacements in?
What’s the solution?
We need the fossil fuels of today to build the rail lines of tomorrow so our kids can get around in a decent way in the future, because it’s likely to be very expensive for the average person to own and drive their own car in the future, and that includes electric vehicles.
We need the fossil fuels of today to build the solar panels and wind turbines of tomorrow, lest our kids and their babies be left sitting around in the cold and the dark, shivering and hungry.
We need the fossil fuels of today to build the cities of tomorrow, both small and large, retrofitting what we’ve got for more walkability so that transport and energy won’t matter as much.
We need the fossil fuels of today to very specifically build out the world our kids will inherit or there will not be very much for them to inherit.
If we don’t do this we’ll get wars over precious energy sources instead of thoughtful planning, and our legacy to the next generation will be an instant-gratification, live-for-the-moment gluttony that leaves the landscape littered in bad reminders of an era that died with nothing meaningful to take its place.
We can do better.
Probably the single most important act in Occupying Parenting is to address the energy infrastructure of today and put it in the service of the clean energy infrastructure of tomorrow. It involves demanding of the government that Big Oil and Big Coal no longer receive subsidies, giving more support to the clean energy sector instead.
It demands that we shame our “pro-business” culture into embarrassment for falling so woefully behind countries like China and Germany in terms of making clean energy sources and rail transport (and other mass transit) a societal priority and business opportunity. We must demand the amazing job opportunity (that can’t really be outsourced) that would come from an Apollo-style effort to build out the clean energy economy of tomorrow in America.
Be part of the solution
To love our kids means to think long term. One view, the one in which we do nothing and use fossil fuels to “save us” from declining fossil fuels is a vision of a choking planet with despoiled waterways, poor health and less access to good food.
The other vision is one where society is transformed by turning a crisis into an opportunity, and leaving to our kids the clean energy of the sun and wind along with walkable cities for their health, organic farms for their nutritious foods, and mass transit for getting around.
The people of this country can no longer play around with our future through petty politics, corporate intimidation, and personal denial. We have to wake up our hearts and minds to the real implications of declining fossil fuels and show the courage and will to make the changes that will put in place something better.
Three easy things you can do to get started are:
- To reduce waste that strains our resources and creates pollution, commit to cutting down on one-use coffee cups, plastic water bottles and styrofoam anything. It’s also better for your health to bring your own.
- Cut your driving by 25% this year through car pooling, combining errands and walking, biking or taking the bus or train whenever possible.
- Teach your kids about how energy is in everything and how important it is for them to conserve it to be frugal and healthy.
And finally…stay tuned to Occupy Parenting, where we’ll have a lot more to say about the relationship between energy and our kids’ futures.
–Lindsay Curren, Occupy Parenting
About Lindsay Curren
Nice work, Lindsay, thanks
You nailed this important topic for all of us–and important in special ways for parents. We are more inclined than non-parents, in general, to think about the world our children will inherit from us. And we are in a position to teach our kids about where energy comes from, along with the reasons and ways to be energy conservors.