Time for Change Essay examples

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Time for Change The United States (U.S.) is technically a mixed market economy; even though the free market is the engine that drives our economy. The government sometimes has to intervene to keep U.S. industries competitive. Sometimes the government intervenes in the form of subsidies to assist U.S. industries and/or tariffs on competitive imports. Government support for green industries is essential. The green industry is a developing industry that does not benefit from economy of scale; but the transition from fossil fuels must begin with the right mix of wind, solar, bio-mass, hydro, and other renewable energy sources. Currently, fossil energies are by far the most widely used source of power, providing a little over 80% of the world’s supply of primary energy. “Oil still represents the most important share, 35%, followed by coal, 26%, natural gas, 21%, renewable energies, 13%, and lastly, nuclear power, 6%” (Rojey p.3). Nearly 8% of the renewable energy supply comes from biomass, 16% from Hydroelectricity, and 4% from other forms of renewable energy. In total, this is about one-half of the total primary energy consumed. The world reserves of hydrocarbons, oil, and natural gas, which provide more than half of the primary energy supply, are unequally distributed, mostly located in regions far from the main consumption areas. Consequently, more and more of these hydrocarbons must be imported by the consumer countries. The fact that some of the oil and gas reserves are located in unstable regions of the world creates geopolitical risks. In addition, the problem of security of supplies is aggravated by the limited number of players controlling a major proportion of the reserves. Saudi Arabia controls oil, and Russia, Qatar, and Iran controls natural gas. Globalization of the economy has led to greater dependency on oil, due to the ever-increasing demand for petroleum fuels and more generally, fossil fuels. Recently, the world has seen that the global economy could cope reasonably well with an increase in the cost of energy. In contrast, however, an interruption, even temporary, in oil supplies would cause a major crisis. (Rojey p.13-18) The opposition for green energy has a short term economic and environmental view points. An influential opposing argument comes from Jerry Taylor. Taylor is among the most widely cited and influential critics of Federal Energy and Environmental Policy in the Nation. He has been a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and The Nation Review; he also makes regular appearances on CNBC, NPR, BBC, and Fox News. Taylor’s argument opposing renewable energy has four main points. To begin Taylor argues that green energy takes up vast amounts of landscape. To support his argument a calculation by Jesse Ausubel a research assistant at Rockefeller University, shows that unorder to power New York the entire state of Connecticut would need to be devoted to wind turbines. Secondly, not only does green energy take up a lot of land space, it is also more costly. According to the president’s Energy Information Administration in 2016 on shore wind energy production will be eighty percent more expensive than combined cycle and gas fired electricity. Thirdly, green energy is unreliable. Taylor argues that in order to have profitable and noticeable change in our energy market the sun would need to shine daily and the wind would have to blow at full throttle to make a difference. Finally, Taylor points out that even if the sun shines daily and the wind was blowing fierce we would be unable to properly store the energy, because we do not have the battery technology that is needed. In closing his argument Taylor asks this question, “If green energy is so inevitable and such a great investment, why do we need to subsidize it?” Taylor then goes on to add that if green energy was something the American people wanted and needed, we would have profit hungry investors to finance the projects.(Taylor)
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