Sun-Set Boulevard

With oil prices a fraction of what they were a year ago, despite clear new incentives passed in the Obama administration to spur investment in alternative energy, Americans are not diving into investing in a massive build-out of new factories to provide affordable alternative energy. Why bother? Fossil fuels, even with their damaging impact on the environment – clear contributors to the greenhouse effect resulting in rapid climate change – are cheap. Right now, not only are we short the cash to buy the product (and worried about losing our job if we even have one), but so many the very homes we’d install items like solar panel on are so far underwater (below mortgage value) that home improvement is not even on the priority schedule anymore.

China tells us that their new export priorities include building a globally marketed all-electric car, and the U.S. is a clear target. With Chrysler and GM running the bankruptcy marathon, assuming they both emerge, and with Ford struggling to keep alive without government help, indigenous automakers are way behind the engineering and retooling curve; the Chevy Volt has not exactly rocked the earth. While countries like Norway and Israel are deal with battery-swapping stations and electrical charging capacity for cars on a very large level, we sit and wait for stimulus dollars to be released. There is little more than a trickle so far.

In my recent Buy Me, Rent Me blog, it’s pretty certain that with growing global demand and China’s buying commodity-output at a massive scale (such as it very large “buys” of petroleum future output from entire nations), oil prices have nowhere to go but up in the very near term. Despite one small promising technology that actually breaks the carbon dioxide molecule into its components – a process that is a long, long way from being economically significant – the definition of “clean coal” power generation seems to be nothing more than shove it into the earth (e.g., where oil once was found but has since been extracted), and we’ll deal with it later.

The issue here is our future. Not just the environment and the cost of oil. What exactly are we going to manufacture and sell to the rest of the world in our future? Medical research? Sure. Entertainment? We’re trying, but the rest of the world is producing much more of their own fare. Weapons and aeronautics? It’s been big business arming the world and selling aircraft. Software? We’re still on top, but sliding. But we’re already all over these industries, and financial services – where America until recently has made 40% of its “profits” – is not the answer anymore. What’s the “new” new?

We hear about “alternative energy,” but those appear to be just words. Take solar electrical power generation, an industry that we pioneered. The May 3^rd New York Times: “T[he] United States lost its status as the world’s leading solar manufacturer in the 1990s as interest surged elsewhere. Now it makes little more than 5 percent of solar panels worldwide.”

Foreign solar panel manufacturers are building plants in the U.S. to take advantage of the eventual necessity of Americans implementing alternative energy programs not just because the government thinks we should, but because the cost of fossil fuels will inevitably fly through the roof again, and we just won’t be able to afford them. Further, if inflation tanks the dollar as expected, American labor – being paid in dollars – will be a whole lot cheaper than European labor. If global protectionism raises its ugly head, there are even more reasons to located in the States.

Like the German-owned plant in Hillsboro, Oregon: “Buoyed by the potential promise of a green economy, [Boris] Klebensberger, who heads the American branch of SolarWorld AG, a company based in Bonn, Germany, is ramping up production of solar cells in a retrofitted factory that had its grand opening last October — in the teeth of the financial crisis… ‘Was I worried about our position? No!’ says Mr. Klebensberger, dismissing any hint that he was nervous at the opening. And he remains just as bullish today. SolarWorld’s plant here, which makes enough cells to fit 1,700 solar panels a day, is the biggest of its kind in the United States.” NY Times.

If this managed depression is our wake-up call, and we sleep through it, our future is indeed bleak. But Americans are doer, not whiners. It’s just time to start doing.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.