We have been hearing a lot about the energy crisis lately. Not a lack of energy, but it’s cost. Every politician, every news media person and every environmentalist has their own unique and politically correct solution if the general public was only smart enough to get it.

When I worked at the telephone company, occasionally somebody in public relations, or human resources, or marketing, or accounting would come up with some technological idea that sounded good but, from a technical, cost or managerial perspective was impractical, impossible or silly. Sometimes they were all three. If the person who suggested it was of a high rank, we spent, or rather, wasted, time “studying” the feasibility of their whim.

Public comments about what to do about the energy crisis make me feel like I’m living my life all over again.

Indulge me while I go over some basics. Newton’s law of motion states that it would require a fixed amount of energy to propel, say a 3000 pound vehicle, from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds. Or to travel 500 miles. The amount energy used is the same whether its electricity, gravity, wind, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel or political hot air.

T Boone Pickens’ idea about using wind power to produce electricity is the most wildly impractical I have heard. His 4000KW windmill farm will occupy 8600 acres and it will produce 4000KW only 20% of the time! As any weather forecaster knows, the wind is a fickle thing. Let’s say you’re buying your household electricity from T. Boone Pickens and the wind chooses to blow it’s daily 20% at the required velocity for five hours today between midnight and five a.m. The rest of that day you have to pump your own water, cook in a wood cook stove and fan yourself to keep cool in the hot Texas midday. There is no reason to believe enough wind would blow every day, or even every month. That 20% might come during the week you went to the beach.

Although it’s a boon to corn farmers, it takes almost as much energy to extract usable energy from corn as the energy you get.

But the silliest, most airhead, solution is the electrical automobile. Let’s say they invent a battery with enough electrical storage to propel a 3000 pound car 500 miles at normal highway speeds on one charge. (The GM test model is already all the way up to 40 miles.) This will take the same equivalent amount of energy as it would using gasoline. How many people do you know who have free electricity? Let’s say you arrive at your destination, check in at the local Holiday Inn and ask to charge your car’s batteries.

Folks, they are not going to just give you that energy. As a matter of fact, I bet it would cost more to “fill up” your batteries than to buy a tank of gas. Plus it would probably take all night. You’d have to hire a taxi to take you to dinner. And when you get back home, think how much your electric bill will go up with a $50.00 battery recharge twice a week. But, you say, at least we won’t be funding Arab terrorism when we buy Arab oil at exorbitant prices.

True. I’m with you there. But, how will we generate all that electricity? Nuclear power? Environmentalists oppose nuclear power. Obama has said he opposes nuclear power. Coal power? The environmentalists and the Democrats get apoplectic when you mention coal power plants. How about hydro-electric power? We don’t have enough waterways that we can reasonably dam. Plus, the environmentalists are pressing the government to stop using hydroelectric power and we have already demolished existing hydroelectric dams.

We could use ocean currents and tidal power but that would injure fish, change ocean currents and affect the climate.

Where will the energy come from?

Not to mention all the taxes from motor fuel sales that build and maintain the nation’s highways. If you had an electric car, they would add a meter at your house to measure how much current you use to charge your car batteries and tax you for it.

It’s time to get real and drill for more of our own oil. Or continue to buy oil from our enemies. Or buy a mule, a water pump with a handle, a wood cook stove and a fan.

Gene Alston