Energy

The economics of wind. The role of coal in the energy economies of the U.S. and Illinois. Whether and how to support emerging technologies to burn coal more cleanly. The environmental costs of mining and consuming coal for power generation. Whether and how to effect a transition to renewables and away from fossil fuels. How to make public transit a viable alternative and conservation through efficiency a widespread private habit.

Today's readers will recognize these as very current issues—as they also were in the 1970s and early 1980s, when I started writing about energy. The nation was then being held in hock, in effect, to the oil sheiks, and when they shut off imports in 1973 it caused a shock that the U.S. would not feel again until 9-11, when Saudis led a different kind of attack on America.

The panic then was how to achieve energy independence. The panic today is about how to avoid rendering the planet inhospitable to humans because of the heedless combustion of fossil fuels. But while the ends of policy have shifted, the means are mind-numbingly familiar. Everything that had to be explained, over and over, in the 1970s has to be explained again 30 years later. No one learned. Not much changed, and even what did change didn't change for the right reasons. 

Which means, perhaps, that these pieces will strike younger readers today as fresh and relevant. I hope so.

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Note: The City of Springfield owns its own power generation facility, a legacy of public power socialists of the 1920s. That makes energy policy a matter of local politics in Springfield, which is unfortunate, but it also made energy policy an appropriate subject for Illinois Times columns (links to which appear below) which for me was very fortunate. 

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