• Front page
• Receive letters on your RSS reader

Too much effort is put into finding new sources of oil and derivatives of coal. We need a larger push for renewable energy. By using domestic renewable sources, we will not only reduce our reliance on unstable outside sources but create more jobs in America and support a healthier environment.
To get this going I’d like to see Sen. Ken Salazar encourage Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman to let the Senate vote on a renewable energy standard that would require utilities to generate at least 20 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources by 2020.

Luke Janes, Denver

READER COMMENTS

whats the matter luke you dont want to start a clean renewable source your self and sell it? Why should the government come in and tell a private business how they must do business?
have you signed up to get your green energy from excel? maybe they could use your hot air and all of the hot air from your types and not spend billions of dollars for 20%.
if your talking about wind farms can they put one in your back yard? and after they do how are you going to protect all of the birds from flying into them? Oh and dont forget to get the government to allow the wind farms to opperate at 100% instead of the reduce amount they do right now.
this is the ground floor so get busy and build your network of renewables and be a leader and not one to sit back and whine that the government has to do it.

John do you have solar panels on the top of your house? We shouldn't relay on the government regulating everything we need to do it ourselves. Do you walk to places less than 2 miles from your house to save gas? We need a change in habits to kick our energy needs down.

Holy Cow! Depend on Reid and Salazar? Our bovine friends are impressed by the methane those two produce. But we do need alternative fuel.

With 85% of the energy-rich outer contenintal shelf out of bounds, ANWR out of bounds, no new crude refineries built in 30 years, no new nuke power plants built in 30 years and a 250 year supply of coal virtually untapped, not much of an effort is needed to produce a massive surplus of energy throughout all of North America.

So when do we stop whinning and make things happen? What does it take? With all the many energy answers right under our collective butts, are we really that stupid?

Luke you need to wake up. The definition of renewable changes based on what the environmentalist need at that moment. The Northwest gets about 80% of their power from clean hydropower. Hydro provides flood control, irrigation drinking water storage, recreation and clean carbon free power that can, unlike wind and solar, bet turned on and off like a switch. But guess what, the northwestern utilities can't count it as renewable. China gets to sell CO2 credits from its hydro plants on the open market. The USA can't even count hydro as a renewable let alone sell the CO2 credits from the hydro projects. The Sierra Club and others want to tear down dams like Glen Canyon and Hoover. Without the Hoover dam, Los Angeles would dry up and blow away. On second thought, some good could come from removing Hoover.

Just to clarify a recent congressional study showed that it is not possible to confirm there is a 250 year supply of coal in the United States.

Report - Coal: Research and Development to Support National Energy Policy

Oh yeah! Renewables!! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? BRILLIANT!!!

Salazar will only support a renewable source if it includes work visas and primary employment for others not United States Citizens and has a huge tagalong amnesty law.

"Just to clarify a recent congressional study showed that it is not possible to confirm there is a 250 year supply of coal in the United States."

You gotta be kidding, there is not one energy expert in congress. These folks are mostly english majors who became lawyers. They are full time politicos. These folks wouldn't recognize a coal mine if they fell into one.

And these are the very same bunch who seem frequently capable of confirming global warming. Pelosi claims that she actually "saw it" and Al gore invented it and makes a large living off of it. But G-W still remains very unproven even by the many "experts" in the scientific community. And the rapidly growing number of defectors from G-W are beginning to look like the start of the Boston Marathon.

Hank needs to know that the congressional study was ordered as a report to the congress, not conducted by them.

T and Hank,

You two are funny. I’m with you all the way, guys.

“Our bovine friends are impressed by the methane those two produce,” and “…the rapidly growing number of defectors from G-W are beginning to look like the start of the Boston Marathon.” I laughed out loud at those lines.

Please write here more often. We could use a little levity on this blog.

I don’t think there has been too much effort in finding new sources of oil and coal. We have already found them, but are not going after them because of the hand wringing from environmentalists. We hear the constant drum beat that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil so much that it has become a household clique. But as has already been pointed out on this thread, we already have resources that are available if only we’d tap into them.

No doubt, we need to get away from oil eventually and use something a lot cleaner, but we cannot just suddenly jump to renewable energy without first building the machines capable of running on them. And right now those are pretty pricey so consumers are reluctant to purchase them. Change is not something we shoul fear, but we need to be practical when going about it.

Lets dfrill in Rocky Mountain National Park. We could have enough oil and gtas for two hundred years!

POST A COMMENT

• 'Kid Nation' reality show a new low
• Rivers a shameful hire
• Too little news
• ‘Diesel’ fumes
• Unlocalized story a disservice to readers
• Riled up by Christian music
• Darling of the left
• Solutions too costly