A Sustainable Approach to Energy:  Let’s Give It a Chance

It’s the birthday of John Lennon, which provides me the opportunity to relate the following little anecdote.  About 10 years ago when my daughter was a little girl, we happened to be driving somewhere when “Give Peace a Chance” came on the radio.  As it was unfamiliar to her, she rushed to change the station, but I insisted that we listen to the song in its entirety.  At the end, she was clearly resentful that I had forced her to sit through something that was so horribly repetitive.  “OK!! I got it! All we are saying is give peace a chance!  I heard it the first time!”

She was only partially consoled when I explained to her that the song expressed the spirit of many tens of millions of people who had become so outraged about a major war our country was conducting and the tens of thousands of young people who were dying, that they demanded that the war stop.  And guess what?  It happened.  I explained that one of the top leaders at the time (Henry Kissinger) said, just a few years ago, “If it weren’t for the objection to the war in Vietnam as voiced by the common American, we’d still be there.”

My message to her then, and to anyone who may have come across this post just now, is that your voice matters.  Ideas change things.

This, for what it’s worth, is why I’m quite convinced that the good guys are in the process of winning the battle for a sustainable approach to energy.  Yes, there are powerful forces that want to suck the last molecule of crude out of the ground and burn it.  But there are also more than 200,000 groups working tirelessly on behalf of social and environmental justice who simply will not let this happen.  The number is large, and it’s building every day.

Again, never forget: your voice matters.