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Profound Gratitude: Remarks by Jennifer Marrapese, Executive Director at Annual Meeting, 9/15/12

September 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Welcome everybody to the 2012 annual meeting of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.

I am really excited that we’re here in Portland. There’s a vibrant green building and sustainable energy community here – a community that has built what they need in the form of the monthly Building Science Discussion Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, Passive House Maine, USGBC’s Maine Chapter, the Pretty Good House movement and many other formal and less formal organizations and collaborations.

The Portland area has traditionally not been as well served by NESEA as many other areas in our territory. And for as long as I’ve been at NESEA, we’ve been hoping to change that. So I was delighted when NESEA board member Phil Kaplan invited me to Portland and asked us to consider hosting our annual meeting here.

Since our first meeting with Phil and the Building Science Discussion Group in June, many of you Mainers have drunk the NESEA Kool Aid. Architect Rick Renner, a longtime NESEA member, is running for the NESEA board of directors. Sam Strickland is serving on a committee to help us create and launch online communities of practice so that geography ceases to be such a challenging barrier for NESEA members who want to learn and share year round. Steve Konstantino of Maine Green Building Supply has become a business member and opened his facility up last night for an annual meeting pre-game – a Building Science Discussion Group to welcome the whole NESEA community to town.

Profound gratitude. As I prepared my remarks for tonight, that was the mindset I started from. I feel profoundly grateful to this community and appreciative of all that we are accomplishing together.

Let me explain to whom I am grateful and why.

I am grateful to the more than 200 members who are really actively engaged with NESEA far above and beyond simply writing a check and receiving their monthly newsletter and their BuildingEnergy Magazine twice a year. It is surely unprecedented within NESEA that almost a third of our members are actively engaged in planning the conference, hosting sites in our Green Buildings Open House tour, submitting content for BuildingEnergy magazine, and serving on NESEA program and board committees.

I am grateful to Jamie Wolf for recently helping us to articulate something that we’ve known intuitively for a very long time:  that the BuildingEnergy Conference is NESEA’s crown jewel, or the center of NESEA’s universe, but that it occurs only for 3 days/year in Boston. Jamie shared with me his vision for BE365, which makes the BuildingEnergy experience available to NESEA members every day of the year through various events, gatherings, online learning and other forums throughout the year.

I am grateful to lifetime NESEA member Bernice Radle, who at the ripe old age of 26 is rallying a group of NESEA member preservationists to plan a kick-ass Green Buildings Open House tour in Buffalo on October 13th, and who is trying to bring the rest of the NESEA community into the digital age with her incredible promotional savvy using twitter, facebook, blogging and Pinterest.

I am grateful to Marc Rosenbaum, one of our NESEA rock stars, who has partnered with us, and who has spent more than 100 hours to develop and help us launch a 10-week online course for the BuildingEnergy Masters Series, and who recently shared with me, “I could develop and market a course like this on my own. Yet what appeals to me about this arrangement is that I get to advance my personal mission of expanding our collective capabilities, while creating an income stream, and also give back to this organization that has been such a key factor in my success. However, it’s a business partnership, not a charity -  NESEA has skin in the game just as I do.”

I am grateful to NESEA board member Kate Goldstein, who, although she is still a starving student, is digging deep for NESEA this year. Not only did she become a lifetime member – a great investment for somebody who’s still in her 20s – but she has also pledged a leadership gift in our annual fundraising appeal, because, in her words, “The diversity of NESEA’s membership is a gift for us who have not yet found our own path. NESEA is the shelter of our community.”

I am grateful to my staff – at least three of whom, despite being handed a salary freeze this year, have decided to invest some of their discretionary income into NESEA membership because they believe deeply in what we’re about here, and they consider themselves a part of this community.

I am grateful to Paul Eldrenkamp, who confided in me that one of the happiest days of his life was the day that he left his last NESEA board meeting in the mid-1990s. He went and sat in his car for a few minutes and let out a freedom cry that others may have heard even from inside the building. Paul shared that the board as a group (not its individual members) was so dysfunctional, and mired in the day to day operation of the organization, that he couldn’t wait to get out. Well, Paul is a testament to how things have changed for the better. This year, not only is he chairing the BuildingEnergy Conference, and bringing a ton of new talent into the organization through his vast network, but he’s also teaching a BuildingEnergy Masters Series class on Passive House online, and running for the NESEA board!

I am grateful to the 20 or so NESEA members – some long timers, some newbies – who are helping us experiment with and launch active online communities so that they can learn together how best to apply systems thinking in their practices and what are the elements of a generative economy. These communities will serve as a forum in which NESEA members can share with each other what’s working (and what’s not) in service of a more sustainable built environment. Based on what we learn from these communities of practice, we’ll launch others in the new year – including one on Deep Energy Retrofits, one on Zero Net Energy Buildings, and possibly even one on our topic tonight, the Pretty Good House.

These examples barely scratch the surface of all we’ve accomplished together over the past year. And all of this is happening in the worst building environment in 20 years.

In many ways, last year represented the “perfect storm.” Almost everything that could have gone wrong financially, did. NESEA’s membership numbers and Sustainable Green Pages listings continued their steady decline since the housing market crash in 2009. BuildingEnergy registration and exhibitor numbers declined, despite a whopping 97% of our attendees saying that they would recommend the conference to a colleague. We lost substantial donations from two longtime donors whose funding focus shifted and whose portfolios suffered at the hands of a lackluster economy.

We knew before the year even started that we were going to run a deficit in Fiscal Year 2012. We even budgeted for it. We invested heavily in staff, hiring a membership coordinator and a communications coordinator. We also invested in our infrastructure, launching a new website, supported by a new, more nimble database. We knew it would take time for these investments to pay off. Unfortunately, the deficit we ran was larger than anticipated.

NESEA’s reason for being is to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment. The rest of the industry is finally catching on as well.

Last year’s bottom line fails to tell the whole story. It doesn’t tell the story of the momentum we’re building, one practitioner at a time. It doesn’t tell the story of the quality of engagement within our membership, within the BuildingEnergy planning process, and at BE itself.

I truly believe that we’re planting the right seeds, and that if we continue to provide quality engagement experiences, the numbers will follow. I also know that we’ll continue to learn and adjust the plan as we go!

So I’m grateful. I’m invested in this organization and in this community, not just professionally, but also personally, as I complete my own deep energy retrofit and prepare to showcase my home on NESEA’s Green Building Open House tour, which will be held on October 13th throughout NESEA’s 10 states, from Maine all the way down to Delaware.

Now’s the time for you to invest as well. Invest in NESEA and in our future in a way that makes sense for you. If you’re not a member, join. If you are a member, consider donating or sponsoring above and beyond your membership contribution. Or give the gift of NESEA membership to a colleague to help grow our community.

If you’re a newcomer to our community, invest in your own professional development as you get to know us better. Enroll in one of our BuildingEnergy Masters Series courses and partake in  high quality interactive educational content from the comfort of your home or office. Learn about zero net energy homes from Marc Rosenbaum, the man who’s probably engineered more of them than anybody else in the Northeast. Learn about Passive House from Mike Duclos and Paul Eldrenkamp, a member of the inaugural group of Passive House certified consultants in the U.S. Then connect with others in your class to share what you’re learning and create a community of practice that can meet in person at next year’s BuildingEnergy Conference.

Attend the Building Energy Conference, exhibit there, sponsor. Even better, help shape our content by joining the planning committee for the BuildingEnergy Conference. Register your most recent project for our Green Buildings Open House tour in October. Enter your best work in NESEA’s Zero Net Energy Building Award to compete for our annual $10,000 prize. Submit an article for publication in BuildingEnergy Magazine, our peer-reviewed journal by and for sustainable energy professionals in the Northeast.

Invest in the community that is building your knowledge base, your practice, your career, and a more sustainable built environment.

Before I close, I’d like to thank a few people without whom this meeting would not have happened. First, thank you to our committee of locals who advised us on all of the nuts and bolts decisions we needed to make – from the beautiful location we are in to the buildings we should include on the tours earlier today to the Pretty Good House speaking program tonight. Those committee members include Matt Holden, Steve Konstantino, Dan Kolbert, and Rick Renner, among many others.

Next, I’d like to thank our sponsors for tonight – Sparhawk Group, Maine Association of Building Energy Professionals, and Thorton Tomasetti Fore Solutions. And a special thanks to sponsors Kaplan Thompson Architects and Pinnacle Windows, who are hosting a party after tonight’s meeting at Grace, a beautifully restored church and restaurant with an awesome looking menu!

Huge thanks also to Phil Kaplan of Kaplan Thompson Architects for advocating in favor of holding the meeting here in Portland and for connecting us with all the folks here who could help make it happen.

And finally, thank you to Kelsey Hobson, our summer intern from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. Kelsey came in at the beginning of the summer and flat out handled all the logistics for this meeting, with almost no guidance. She herded a group of benevolent but busy cats to score us this great location, and planned all of the building tours. She did such a great job that we decided to hire her permanently – or at least as permanently as she’ll have us. This is one NESEA emerging professional with a very bright future.

And now, I’d like to welcome to the stage NESEA board chair, James Petersen. James has been a huge champion of our work to “expand the choir,” and has supported these efforts personally by being a NESEA evangelist within his own professional network. James will share with you an update on where the board would like to see NESEA head, and on what your role might be in helping to create our future success.

Filed Under: BuildingEnergy Conference & Trade Show, Communications, deep energy retrofit, Events, Green Building, Industry, NESEA, NESEA Members, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Building, Whole Systems Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dietz & Co. Architects Project Achieves LEED Gold Certification

January 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Great news from the NESEA membership! Congratulations to Dietz & Company Architects on receiving the LEED Gold Certification for their work on a project with the YWCA! This is especially exiting news because Marc Sternick, VP of Dietz & Co, is on our Board of Directors and the firm is a local, NESEA business member.

The full press release is included here:

Springfield, Mass. – Dietz & Company Architects, Inc. has received LEED for Homes Gold certification from USGBC (the U.S. Green Building Council) for the recently completed units at the YWCA’s Campus of Hope. These new units provide housing that serves to transition women from domestic violence shelters to longer-term living facilities. The 32,000 square foot project is made up of 20 apartments and eight congregate housing units within its walls. This project was part of the larger Campus of Hope initiative
that was started more than 10 years ago for which Dietz & Company Architects was the master planner. Dietz & Company Architects also
designed the first phase of this campus: a 60,000 square foot building that includes administrative offices, meeting and classrooms as well as an on-site shelter.

In the finest tradition of the YWCA, this project features cutting edge technology in Green construction, women-owned partnerships and the
overwhelming support of the community it seeks to serve. The project, originally designed to achieve LEED for Homes Silver certification level, exceeded that level by achieving Gold certification.

Several factors that supported the LEED for Homes Gold Certification include: super-insulated walls and airtight construction, efficient mechanical systems that include roof-mounted photovoltaic panels for electricity, sustainable site design and the use of green construction materials. A healthy indoor environment, pollution reduction and lower utility/maintenance costs are also key elements of this certification. This highly efficient building is expected to reduce water and energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent over typical code compliant construction.

NL Construction was the general contractor for this project and the project was supported by the LEED for Homes Provider, CET. The LEED
(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™ is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for
developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

 

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Maclay Architects redesign Putney General Store

December 8, 2011 By 2 Comments

This is a more personal post, but I promise it’s relevant to NESEA!

In 2008, the 200 year old Putney General Store caught fire and was severely damaged. The Putney Historical Society and town rallied to purchase the property and start to rebuild. In 2009, an arsonist set fire and obliterated the store completely. The Putney Historical Society and town again set about to rebuild. Maclay Architects, Bill Maclay’s (you may remember him from our recent Net Zero Event at Mitsubishi) architectural firm is one of the companies working on the general store’s resurrection. [hide-this-part morelink="Read more..."]

The Putney General Store was so important to me in my childhood. I was in Dummerston, VT nearly every summer growing up and continue to visit every winter with my family. These visits to Dummerston always involved a trip to the Putney General Store for sandwiches, Matchbox cars, and penny candy.

I was devastated when I found out about the 2008 fire, but relieved to know that there were efforts to rebuild. When I checked in to see its progress a year later  in 2009, I was devastated again to learn that it had been incinerated in an intentional fire.

Flash forward to just a month or so ago when I was learning more about Bill Maclay’s firm in preparation for the Net Zero event at Mitsubishi. I was browsing their website to see their current projects. I knew they had done a project for the Putney School (on the cover of the Fall 2011 Northeast Sun), but I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were part of the team working to rebuild the General Store. They have designed it to be a high performance, energy efficient multi-use building (retail and business). (You can read about the project at the Maclay Architects website)

I stopped in Putney last weekend on a whim and saw the (nearly) finished product. It looks almost exactly like the store we lost. While I know the interior won’t have the old, worn labyrinthine aisles and that 200 year old musty barn smell, I take comfort in knowing that it has been improved upon and respected by all those who worked to rebuild it. When I saw the architects’ rendering, I was struck by how well they kept its historical integrity, and in person, how well the rendering translated to the real building. While it looks shiny and new, it doesn’t look out of place or out of sync.

[/hide-this-part] Its grand reopening is this weekend, Saturday Dec. 10th. (Information about the reopening is available here).

I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate Maclay Architects on reviving such an important structure and institution in Putney, while undoubtedly incorporating updates and design elements that will make it more resilient in an uncertain energy future.

NESEA members, your work has a significant impact on so many levels. I think that this is an aspect of the ‘whole system’ that we talk about. The built environment occupies more than just physical space. Beyond (or underlying) the building system, the environmental/ecological systems, there are the socio-cultural systems. This project touches on all of them – as I imagine the work all of you do does in one way or another.

Thank you for doing what you do.

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Great News from the Membership!

September 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Long-time NESEA Members Kuhn Riddle Architects (KRA) based in Amherst, MA  have recently earned LEED Platinum (New Construction) certification, in conjunction with Arrowwood Construction (also of Amherst, MA)  for their work on New England Environmental’s headquarters (NEE.)

According to their press release, a sampling of the building’s energy New England Environmental (Kuhn Riddle Architects)specs include a 39,000 kW photovoltaic array (installed by other long-time NESEA members PV Squared), 12” thick walls (2×6 and 2×4 with a 3” thermal break) filled with 12” cellulose insulation (recycled material), and 24” of cellulose insulation for the ceilings. And for one more additional member shout-out – Solectria Renewables products were used!

While LEED certifications seem to be popping up all over, Andy Grogan of KRA comments,

“[the project] shows how local professionals and an engaged community can create a project that achieves levels of energy efficiency that too often feel out-of-reach for commercial projects without substantial budgets…For this project, the architects (Kuhn Riddle), most consultants, and the contractor/subcontractors were all local.  Many were educated here at UMASS Amherst.  And as the client will tell you, this project did not cost an arm-and-a-leg to construct, but it achieves remarkable levels of energy efficiency.”

Moreover, as John Kuhn (one of the lead architects on the project) noted, the integration of PV into the building was not an afterthought, but rather part of the process all along. Jon Child of PV Squared also mentioned the collaborative design process – for example, that the architects went for a long, rectangular roof  to accommodate the solar panels.

This type of collaboration is a  perfect example of the kinds of conversations that should be happening between builders and designers and renewable energy installers to ensure that all the systems work together seamlessly. Jon Child commented on how essential it is to have the systems in communication with one another, otherwise things fall apart – for example the HVAC needs to be in conversation with the renewables which needs to be in conversation with the overall design. This is, I’m sure, very basic to NESEA member thinking, but it’s always nice to hear about it in practice! I know when I hear about LEED failures, I find myself wondering, “Where was the communication?”

On that note, we complain a great deal within the NESEA community about having LEED buildings without LEED people. But, as it turns out, the people at New England Environmental are LEED people! They have about a year’s worth of data (you can see their PV performance here – as linked to their website), as the construction was complete last year, and they embody how LEED residents  make LEED successful. According to John Kuhn (of KRA), Julie Marcus (of NEE) truly spearheaded the LEED process. As New England Environmental is an environmental consulting firm, they wanted to use their headquarters as a lab for what they do and were instrumental in achieving many of the landscaping site points. Another exciting detail is that this was the first LEED project for John Kuhn and Ann Marshall of KRA and for their contractors. Thanks to their excellent collaboration and support from NEE, this project was successful.

You can view some of the photos and more information at the Kuhn Riddle website here and here, and more detail of the PV installation and array here (also linked above).

Even better, you can visit the building yourself on October 1st, as New England Environmental HQ is part of our Green Buildings Open House event!

Our warmest congratulations (and a high five) to Kuhn Riddle Architects, to everyone who worked on the project (way to go PV Squared!), and to New England Environmental.

Hey Members! Do you also have news to share? Let me know! Highlighting your good work is why we are here. Contact me at 413.774.6051 ext. 20, or rheldt@nesea.org.

…And we’re still accepting host sites for GBOH, so if you have a high-performance or otherwise energy efficient building, contact Michelle Rose at 413.774.6051 ext. 17 or mrose@nesea.org.

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Help wanted from NESEA community – anyone w/experience building justa stoves or composting toilets?

March 23, 2011 By 2 Comments

I would love to direct anyone within NESEA’s resources to help with the following email I just received:

…Georganne Greene and I took a group to Nicaragua in February and built an earthbag house (I’ll send you a link to the video we made about it). It was an amazing experience! We’re going back in June, but know we can’t build an earthbag house during the rainy season, so we’re exploring rainy season projects. The project we’re most interested in is building justa stoves, to reduce air pollution from smoke in general and the impact of breathing smoke on the families we’re working with specifically, as well as to reduce the amount of wood that needs to be used in cooking.

As a change of pace from our last project, we thought if we actually built one of these stoves with someone with experience at it before we left, we’d be better prepared when we got there. We’ve found materials online about how to build these stoves and information about people who are building these stoves in other parts of the country or the world, but haven’t found anyone in New England. Could you reach out to your contacts to see if anyone knows of someone that could help us out?

The other project we’d really like to work on is building composting toilets, to reduce the amount of raw sewage going into Lake Nicaragua. We haven’t been able to find a good model for this–the two options we’ve found are buying composting toilets or creating one that’s basically building a wooden box around a 10 gallon bucket. We can’t afford the former and don’t think the latter would be acceptable to the population. If you know of anyone who has developed a good model for this, that would be really exciting.

Thanks for any help you can provide!
Julie

Thanks for your help!

Marc

Marc Sternick, AIA, LEED AP
Vice President, Senior Project Architect
Dietz & Company Architects, Inc.

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Getting Serious About Energy In Public Buildings

April 5, 2009 By 9 Comments

Here in Rhode Island, as elsewhere, well-intentioned people are proposing legislation that would mandate that any public building or any building receiving public subsidy be LEED rated. I already addressed my concerns with that proposal in “Legislating Greenness”. The problems include:

1) Empowering a single private out of state organization with essentially unregulated monopoly powers to define, change, certify and charge for greenness certification, which is effectively being mandated as a building code standard.

2) Eliminating market based competition and real market signals for defining, evolving and improving green building standards.

3) In the only study ever done on LEED buildings, when rigorous statistical analysis was applied to the data in an independent review, it ended up that at least to date, LEED buildings actually have used more energy than typical buildings.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that rating systems like LEED add more layers of complexity and more fees for LEED professionals, architects, engineers and construction managers, but they don’t add any meaningful accountability to the system. That’s exactly why LEED buildings can use more energy than conventional buildings and why LEED rated skyscrapers can leave their lights on all night when nobody is in the building. Once the rating is determined based on design, the building can call itself green no matter how poorly it actually performs.

With the economic situation we are in, the goal of green building advocates has to go beyond putting plaques on walls and having nice things to say in the press. We know that real green buildings actually save energy and save significant amounts of money in their operation. We need real accountability and serious incentives to make that happen.

So lets stop counting points and instead focus peoples attention much more clearly with a measurement we all understand very well – dollars.

The way states fund new buildings needs to be changed. Rather than coming in as an allocation or grant of cash, half the funding should be delivered as it is now under current funding mechanisms and the other half should be delivered to the agency or municipality building the building as a short term zero interest loan with a two year balloon payment. That loan would be forgiven if after two years of operation gas, oil and electric bills are 25% lower in energy units used per square foot than on comparable existing buildings in the state. If the building doesn’t meet this goal, the agency, municipality or other recipient of the funds would have have to repay the loan in full.

Such serious incentive would focus attention on what actually matters far more than counting greenness points.

With financial incentives that are clear and serious, the building procurement process for new buildings would quickly evolve to requiring energy performance bonds from architects and general contractors which would focus their attention very clearly. Architects and contractors would quickly become more serious about details. Schools would have to start training architects and engineers on issues that actually matter. Companies that failed to deliver would have a hard time getting energy performance bonds for future projects. The market would start providing real significant rewards for real green building.

Building operations and maintenance staffs would have more prestige and be considered a far more important part of organizational management with serious money on the line for real measured building performance.

Among other benefits, this kind of legislation would require getting baseline data on the existing building stock. The process of collecting and comparing real baseline data would get the state and municipalities comparing their existing buildings to each other on very simple and easy to calculate metrics – annual therms, gallons of oil and kWh per square foot. It would immediately become very obvious which buildings need to be fixed.

Both through improving the worst performing buildings and building new buildings that use 25% less energy than baseline, the goals and minimum performance levels constantly and automatically reset higher toward better performing buildings.

Such a system doesn’t need “Accredited Professionals” using abstract rating systems to count points. All that is needed is the utility bills that get delivered every month anyway.

Henry Gifford deserves credit for inspiring the concept that buildings should be rated on actual performance as measured by utility bills. All that is needed is to add some real accountability to that very clear and simple rating system.

The situation our country is in regarding energy, the environment and the economy is serious. We need serious incentives to drive serious solutions.

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It's the Oil, Stupid

March 25, 2009 By 11 Comments

At the urging of one friend I’m going to take a little interlude from nagging people on sustainability principles and detour into my of my more common harangues. Not that this crowd needs it as much as most but sometimes some of our architects forget to really stress the energy efficiency aspects of their designs and the recent LEED hoo-haa has made some good points about this. So, let me try to recount a few things about why we ought to be doing some of this–and not using so much glass in a helter-skelter way. Here goes:

It’s the Oil, Stupid !

It’s a sign that ought to hang over the desk of every politician, general and journalist—and architect.

OIL has literally made us what we are today.

Without it, we would not have had the mechanization of agriculture. Before that a farmer could only support the food needs of about 5 others and most of those were his family. Most of us would have been farmers without oil.

Beginning just after WW I it allowed many to leave the farm to become doctors, lawyers, artists, factory workers and so many other professions. OK, so more lawyers may not have been one of the better benefits of oil.

It also meant the beginning of our consumerist society and a value system which often focuses on what we have rather than who we are. It took us from being inner-directed to other-directed

HISTORICALLY, let me give you a litany of events:

Oil. It has been a cause of conflict for decades.

In 1933 Smedley Butler said:

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. .. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I helped make Mexico, .. safe for American oil interests in 1914…. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you,  Smedley was a Marine Corp Major General and the recipient of two Congressional medals of honor. He would have had a third but the rules at that time prevented it.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. A source close to the emperor noted they took this action largely because the US imposed a de facto petroleum embargo on them.

During WW II President Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud and basically laid a policy that we would protect the Saudi Kingdom in return for access to oil. Every US president has renewed that pledge to a nation so abusive of human rights it makes the #1 or #2 spot in that category every year from Amnesty International.

In 1952 the President’s Materials Policy Commission (the Paley Commission) warned that the nation’s oil supply would begin to dwindle by the 1970′s.

In 1953 the US CIA engineered the overthrow of Mohammed Mosidique and put the Shah of Iran in power to protect our access to oil

In 1956 M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil geologist, determined the US would peak in oil production between 1966 and 1970 by three impeccable proofs. It peaked in 1970.

In 1971 the first wave of US military flew arms to Iran. It was later to lead to the revolution. I delivered a jet to them and trained them.

In 1973 we had the Arab oil embargo and developed plans to invade if need be.

In the 1979 Iranian Mullahs together with the middle class, angry about arms spending, overthrew the Shah.

In 1991 we intervened in Iraq to maintain access to Kuwaiti oil

In 2001 the US was attacked by Jihhadist terorists. 15 of 19 were Saudi who saw us as “foreign guards” defiling the land of Mecca and Medina.

In 2003 we invaded Iraq. It’s not because they had rutabagas there–OR weapons of Mass Destruction but they had the second largest oil reserves at the time.

In 2006 George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address “America is addicted to oil”

SO, WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

4% of global population using 25% of oil use

We use 20.5 million barrels per day OR ~7.5 billion barrels a year. China uses about 1/3 as much.

We import roughly 55-60% of it

Surprisingly most does not currently come from the Middle East –maybe 20% of totals

BUT, neither can we drill ourselves to oil independence. You don’t end an addiction by continuing the drug. Let me try to explain:

The mean availability for both ANWR and Outer Continental Shelf combined is ~96 billion barrels, a mean figure

We use 7.5 billion barrels per year

That’s about 12.8 years if we could get it all out at once–and we can’t

It’s a global market and we do not set the price so drilling will not significantly lower its cost either.

When all is said, the Middle East will still have the easy, cheap oil after we exhaust domestic sources.

We will be back to them but even more dependent

Getting off oil is the only real solution and the transition must begin now.

Sad to say oil and the environmental issues will only be taken seriously when linked to national security–and both of them are. In his 1962 book Enough Good Men Dr. Albert E. Burke warned us:

The problem is not money. It is a problem of education to inform Americans about the close tie which has always existed between a wide margin of resources and freedom. Reduce that margin of resources, reduce the quality of those resources and you reduce what Americans have always meant by the word “freedom.”

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