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May 2005 A Call to Action for Energy Independence
by David Goodman, MBA ’71 Just as they increased awareness through the Civil Rights Movement, Americans need to become more energy-wise to free the country from the political consequences of relying on foreign oil.Father’s Day arrives at a bittersweet time every year for the Goodman family. Last year, for example, it fell on June 20, one day short of 40 years since my older brother, Andrew, was kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Our family has tried to make sense of our personal loss on June 21, 1964, by focusing on the power it had to galvanize the American public. As a result of the death of my brother and two other young men who were trying to register African American voters, a great majority of the American people woke up to the terrorism and oppression that were the order of the day in Jim Crow Mississippi and other areas of the country. I accompanied my mother to Mississippi to commemorate that anniversary last Father’s Day, and I am happy to report that the Klan no longer rules in Mississippi. We saw evidence that Afro-Americans and Euro-Americans are working together to bring democracy, prosperity, and, hopefully, justice to their communities there. This year, local officials are pursing a murder conviction in the four-decades-old crimes. But today terrorism and oppression are center-stage on the international scene. I believe that it is important for us to recognize that the same sense of being right or righteous that motivated some citizens in Mississippi to commit brutal murders is operating today in the terrorist threat. Again, it is incumbent on the majority of American citizens to wake up and realize that it is within our power to shift this situation. The question we must each ask ourselves is: “How are we to accomplish this?” We must stand up to terrorists, stop their unholy acts, and reveal their inhumanity. Can we do so by waging a war? I believe that we must find another way. I propose that the first step we take is to wean ourselves from blame and consider how to assume responsibility on a personal level. The newspapers and airwaves have been full of what is wrong in Iraq and whose fault it is. Opinions vary greatly about who is to blame. Although it is tempting, I am not preparing a discourse blaming President Bush. Our current predicament includes the petropolitics that has gotten us in trouble energy-wise, particularly with the Muslim nations, long before this presidency. Blame is convenient because it gets us off the hook, and we can excuse ourselves from taking corrective action. The second step we can take is to wean ourselves from oil and gain greater independence from our Persian Gulf oil suppliers. The most effective step in this direction is to buy and promote the use of hybrid electric vehicles that get more than twice the gas mileage of regular vehicles. This is a subject I have focused on professionally for the last decade as an outgrowth of my work as CEO of United American Energy Corp. I started UAE in 1980 to build, own, and operate electric power generating facilities. With engineers in that company, I got involved in trying to build my own electric vehicle in the late 1980’s and now I am part of an investor group that, along with management, controls and owns the ISE Corp. in San Diego, a 10-year-old company that designs and builds more models of big hybrid electric vehicle propulsion systems than any other U.S. company. Its products include big municipal transportation buses, Mack-type trucks, garbage trucks, and military vehicles. We offer gasoline, diesel, CNG and hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen internal combustion engines as options. These vehicles are between 20 to 50 percent more fuel efficient than conventional diesel buses and emit a fraction of the pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. These hybrid electric vehicles can also operate on all electric propulsion (without the engine running) when quiet operation or zero pollution is required such as in congested areas or underground/ tunnel environments. The U.S. population of 290 million people consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. This means with less than 5 percent of the 6 billion-plus world population, we consume about 25 percent of the world’s oil energy, or over 500 percent more oil energy per person than the rest of the world. Consider the implications if each of us were willing to shave just 20 percent off the top of our consumption: about 1.5 billion barrels per year. Converting the U.S. fleet to hybrid electric vehicles can accomplish this savings. At $46 per barrel, the savings translate to over $69 billion, an amount greater than President Bush’s first tax cut, which supposedly stimulated our present economic recovery. Imagine what saving $69 billion of foreign exchange would do to positively impact our domestic economy now. What if, instead of waiting for the government or industry to fix things, or a national catastrophe or oil shortage to propel us into action, we voluntarily made some changes in our consumption habits? Why is it that, despite knowing that inefficient gas guzzlers pollute our environment and create geopolitical havoc, we continue to purchase non-hybrid SUVs and Hummers rather than hybrid vehicles? The most powerful thing you can do at this time to protect the environment, increase our nation’s energy independence, improve our homeland security, and lower our international trade deficit is to buy hybrid vehicles. In addition, you can let the presidents of Ford, GM, and Chrysler know that you want them to produce nice, comfortable, reliable American hybrids. Then, write your representative and senators and insist that Congress raise the national fuel efficiency standards and stop allowing heavy SUV vehicles, like the Hummer, to be exempt from such efficiency standards because they are over 6,000 pounds. Some of you may be thinking that because I have a stake in a company producing hybrid vehicles, I am writing this to make money. I’m a graduate of the Stanford Business School, after all, and I’ve never minded making money. However, I got involved with hybrid vehicles because in my past ownership of energy plants, I came to realize that a more reasonable energy use in this country was a critical legacy for your grandchildren and mine, and necessary for a more peaceful world in this century. Forty plus years ago, my brother Andrew expected to be making a modest contribution to ending oppression not only in the Deep South but in the whole country. I still wish his had been as modest as he planned, but none of us can deny that it was not Congress or the president that delivered this country from a previous brutal terrorism. Many Americans besides my brother changed their priorities somewhat and took actions within their power to take. The lesson is that we can all influence the economy, the environment, and the safety of the world. At this time, it might be mostly about spending our dollars wisely. Hybrid vehicles can become even better, but they are already comfortable and efficient, and they will help make the world a safer place. David Goodman, MBA ’71, is one of three principals in North Arrows LLC of Upper Saddle River, N.J. From 1980 to 2003, he was CEO of United American Energy Corp. |
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