How Cleantech Can Power An Ecosafe Future

Author’s note: I apologize if you find this article offensive, or in bad taste. This event is a tragedy, and my thoughts are with the family of the Soldier killed: Cpl Nathan Cirillo. It is not my intent to cast a negative light on anyone or anything, or make a political statement. This is merely an exercise to plot a path forward. Writing this is one way I’m working through these events myself, as I’m both angry and shaken.

As many of you may know, a terrorist attack recently occurred on Canadian soil. A soldier was shot and killed while standing a ceremonial guard at the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa, Canada. He was unarmed, other than a ceremonial rifle.

After working through my initial emotions, I started thinking about how we should really deal with terrorists. Now, as far as I know, no organization has taken responsibility, and the shooter killed was Canadian born. However, ISIS has recently called for jihadists to attack Canada, so it seems fair that these events may be related.

Working through all of that, and recalling that ISIS was funded by millions per day in illicit oil money in addition to taxation and other gains, the answer seems clear: Stop buying oil. If the western world and China stop buying Middle Eastern oil, and switch with all due haste to locally produced, clean energy for transportation and electricity, a major source of revenue for terrorism dries up. Even long before we can achieve total independence, we’ll see a massive plunge in the price of oil, which will hurt them right in the financials.

We can do this. We have the technology. It’s here right now. Why not take our billions in oil money, and give it to local electricity producers. This money will go to your neighbors — the local linesman down the street, for example, who helps string up a more robust electrical grid, not a sheikh halfway across the world. It will go to local renewable energy producers, wind turbine maintainers and installers, and solar dealers. The benefits are so clear cut. Reliable, clean, geopolitically stable energy is there for the taking if we could just muster our political and social will power.

And this incident isn’t the only reminder. Not very long ago, we also saw Russia hold the western world hostage over the natural gas supply going through Ukraine. What happens if instead of heating with fossil fuels, we heat with offshore wind turbines and highly efficient heat pumps? Russia can’t hold Europe’s energy security ransom anymore, that’s what. And we can move towards an ecosafe future.