With oil at $139 its time to Green the Economy

Yesterday was world environment day as many of you will already know. Obviously with that in mind the UK government announced that three big off shore wind farms have been given the go ahead. When I say big I do mean big as each will have over one hundred seven mega watt turbines.

Potentially this could be good news for manufacturing in the North East region of England, where I am. As a lot of the skills are already here from the shipbuilding industries of old. Not only that, but much of the design and research and development has been done here too. At Blyth, forty miles from me, the first test turbines were erected nearly ten years ago.

Then tonight on the News the top story was that Oil price has hit new heights yet again of $139 per barrel. Now I am going to shock my American Readers, you think you have it tough at four dollars a gallon for petrol (Gasoline) here in Britain its dollar equivalent price is nearly eleven dollars a gallon. Diesel is over twelve dollars.

While the British government is coming late to this matter, there finally is the realisation that we need alternative sources of energy to fossil fuels. While the cost of oil pushes up the prices at the pumps, it does help reduce consumption and so will help slow down the effects of climate change by a little, what is really needed is investment in renewable's.

Last Saturday the Film Shadow of the Moon was on, a documentary about the Apollo programme and the effort that was made by America to get there. For a long time I have failed to understand why it is that no political leader in the US has been as bold a JFK was in envisioning the moon shot, but for alternative energy.

Just imagine that if in the 1970s America had looked at the oil crisis and said we will not allow ourselves to be dependent on oil and had set out, as was done with Apollo, to develop wind and Solar power generation, imagine the economic strength and power the US would have now. Not only would the US have been spending less on oil, it would have reliable virtually free sources of energy. Imagine the jobs that would have been created by now in the manufacturing and installation of Solar panels and wind turbines.

You only need to look at the way that industries like computing have developed better and faster machines over the last decade to know that the power to innovate is there.

While in Britain we are playing catch up with parts of continental Europe, these new industries are creating jobs, new jobs. The off shore wind farms will create over two thousand new highly paid jobs. Further the investment in research and development is already generating exports for the UK.

I just hope that who ever is elected as the New US president will have the vision of JFK and commit the US to curing its addiction to Oil.