What if?

What if people had paid attention to Carter, and his plan to wean us off of oil?

What if we had seriously explored becoming "green".....waaaaaay back in 1976?

The 200th year of our country would have been the perfect time to launch ourselves into the future.

What a way it could have been, to start the Second Hundred years of our nation.

Given the technology head-start we still had back in those days before Nafta/Cafta/Shafta, and before the outsourcing-of-american-companies, and before college became unaffordable to most young people, we literally still "had it all".

Solar technology was beginning to be talked about in a serious way, and many smart people were just itching to get started. Wind "technology" had been used seriously by every sodbuster who headed west. The windmill pump was no secret, and if a 3rd grade educated immigrant farmer could figure it out, surely the brain-trust of America, circa 1976, could have embellished the basic principle.

Every structure built since 1976, could have (should have?) had solar shingles, or solar panels on every rooftop. High rises could have had solar energy generating glass in every window and its own converting station in the basement. Every garage roof could have been solar, with special facilities for recharging those cars, who slumber inside every night..

Every "Home Show" on TV, has had a show devoted to some "smart guy" who ...all by himself..has converted his home to solar/wind or a combination of the two. There is always a tour of the home, that shows us how they live like "everybody else"...with all the electricity they need, and plenty of hot water..

It's not magic.. It's science.

Cutting edge science and innovation used to be the hallmark of America.....until someone somewhere saw the handwriting on the wall, and decided that we needed to be LESS scientific, LESS cutting edge, and that we needed to go back to the "olden days".

We sent people to the moon with less computing power than most have in their cell phones or in their high schooler's graphing calculator.. The technology is NOT the "problem". It's our ATTITUDES toward science and knowledge.

Who benefits from the 32 year "nap" we have taken?

Instead of living in a house that generates its own power...pollution-free power, and driving cars that do not pollute, we are still using the same old oil, only we are using it at the "new and improved" pricing.

We are paying more than any of us ever imagined, to (mostly) Texas-owned energy companies, for our electricity, as we are constantly insulted by their TV commercials, where they paint themselves as humanitarians.

Many of us drive BIGGER vehicles that get LESS gas mileage than in 1976..They cost too much to even pay off in 3 years (like car loans used to be)..They are made of plastic and tin-foil instead of metal, like the older ones were, and still they get bad gas mileage.

Gas that used to be under 50cents a gallon, when we drove metal-monster-cars, is now approaching $5 a gallon to fill our plastic, $30K behemoths...

Our houses got bigger, but now we find out that bigger really only means more space to fill up with more toxic plastic shit from China, and more airspace to heat/cool with expensive energy. Most people work too nuch to spend much time IN those McMansions.. We have succeeded in building manions for our dogs & cats to enjoy, while we bust our asses 60-70 hours a week to afford those dog/cat houses.

Some pundits have commented about how we have wasted 8 years in the global warming dilemma...

Well, they are partially right...BUT we have wasted THIRTY TWO years..

32 years of enriching oil-companies, corporate executives, politicians...all at the expense of US..and the US..

We wasted a third of that second hundred years.. Those years would have passed, no matter what we did, but wouldn't we all have loved it if they had been well-spent on making us energy self-reliant, and green, and healthier..all at the same time.?