When I was a freshman at Palma High School, I come up with an
idea I knew would change the world
– and also make me gazillions of dollars on the side. In Mr.
Ryan’s science class, I invented a perpetual motion machine.
When I was a freshman at Palma High School, I come up with an idea I knew would change the world – and also make me gazillions of dollars on the side. In Mr. Ryan’s science class, I invented a perpetual motion machine.
One morning, Mr. Ryan talked to the class about magnets and how they worked. Suddenly, in a flash, I conceived in my mind a most brilliant invention. I imagined a pair of rings, one inside the other, with little magnets attached to each in a pattern that would cause them to push and pull each other, thus forcing the outer ring to forever turn around and around and generate a virtually endless supply of energy.
I felt extremely proud of my astonishing genius. I knew I’d stumbled upon the most amazing invention since the wheel. I wondered why Thomas Edison hadn’t thought of it. On a piece of binder paper, I drew a diagram of my invention (I still have the drawing in a box somewhere). And one rainy Saturday afternoon in the barn behind my house, I tried to build it using little refrigerator magnets, a couple of Campbell’s Soup cans and Elmer’s glue.
I’d like to say the contraption worked. It didn’t. It never would work. You see, it would break a universal law – the law of thermodynamics.
Later that semester, Mr. Ryan explained about this bothersome law and why basic physics prohibited my perpetual motion machine from working. Apparently, there’s only a finite amount of energy in the universe. You simply can’t go around creating any more of it for either commercial or personal purposes.
Luckily, even though there’s only so much energy, there’s still lots of it all around us. And that fact brings us to this November’s election and Proposition 87. In a few weeks, voters must decide on this proposition – called the Clean Energy Initiative – that would tax oil companies to the tune of $4 billion to fund the development of renewable energy alternatives.
Lately, every week brings some interesting news about the move by society toward clean energy. Just this week alone, thousands of people attended the Solar Power 2006 expo in San Jose, the nation’s biggest solar industry conference. Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up.
And Internet giant Google on Monday announced it will install 9,200 solar panels on six buildings in its Mountain View headquarters. The project will set a world record for solar installation.
Also on Monday, many of Silicon Valley’s top executives and political leaders signed a letter demanding the federal government reduce the nation’s dependence on oil and promote sales of flex-fuel vehicles that use a combination of gasoline and electricity.
We live in an exciting time. We’re at a crossroads where we’ve started to move away from an oil-driven society toward one where solar, wind, hydrogen and biofuels will power our lives. We stand at the dawning of an exciting historic trend.
One reason for this social change is the fact Americans are now realizing dependence on foreign oil is severely damaging our national security. Every day, we send about $800 million to other countries for the oil they produce. Many of those dollars go to people who want to hurt us. In a sense, we’re financing our enemies to destroy our freedoms and our way of life. That’s not smart.
Also, our extensive petroleum use is damaging our health. Burning fossil fuels dirties the air. Breathing oil’s toxic fumes makes us sick. Nearby, San Joaquin Valley has the nation’s worst air quality and, as a result, many children there suffer from asthma problems. Promoting clean energy will promote better health.
A third reason we need to develop renewable fuel sources is for America’s future economic survival. As China grows into a powerful consumer-driven nation, its 1.5 billion citizens will compete with us for the dwindling supply of the world’s oil. Higher oil prices will result in higher costs for manufacturing and transporting goods, thus playing havoc with our national economy. Developing clean energy will help to stabilize and protect our nation’s financial future.
Also, developing renewable energy sources will create a new economy for California, something that will greatly benefit us in the South Valley region. Locally, we have a Morgan Hill-based company called Anaerobe Systems experimenting on ways to convert industrial food waste into hydrogen to generate electricity.
Despite the common sense reasons to promote clean energy sources, many of our nation’s politicians are oil junkies. They’re still addicted to the dangerous idea the United States can always rely on fossil fuels. We can pump that gooey, messy stuff from out of the ground forever, they seem to believe.
One example of this unrealistic thinking is Congressman Richard Pombo’s recent aggressive attempt to change the federal moratorium protecting California’s coastline from offshore drilling. Gov. Schwarzenegger had to put Pombo in his place by warning him Californians want to protect our natural environment and improve air quality by focusing on cleaner fuels than oil.
We’re making steady headway. More and more Americans now realize that if we focus on innovating better technology and build an infrastructure for it, our nation can generate enough clean energy to power its needs. Industry is already heading down that road.
If voters approve Proposition 87, California could soon become a clean energy model for the rest of the nation. The proposition’s ambitious goal is to reduce the use of oil – mostly in gasoline and diesel – by 25 percent over the next decade. This will be done by funding solar, wind, and hydrogen fuel sources as well as investing in building a state-wide infrastructure to make clean fuel usage more practical.
Back in Mr. Ryan’s science class, my perpetual motion machine was a kid’s unrealistic pipedream, a fantasy for a never-ending energy source. But renewable energy sources are no fantasy. They’re something we must now start developing for the sake of civilization’s future. They’re as closes as we can get to an endless supply of power.
