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I certainly have no objections to electric school buses (see Friday, Feb. 9, in the Bangor Daily News), but as is usually the case for such opinion pieces, a very important point is unstated: Electric vehicles are essentially powered by fossil fuel.
My students have been well familiar with the energy data available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About 80 percent of total American energy use is from fossil fuel, about half the remainder (circa 10 percent) is nuclear, and half of that remainder is biomass (mostly wood). These percentages have changed very little in the past 20 years. Solar and wind contributions to total energy use are quite modest, especially for more urban states. By and large over the last 20 years, solar and wind increases have not decreased fossil fuel use, but rather have decreased the increase in total fossil fuel use.
We need to very rapidly decrease all fossil fuels with the goal to totally eliminate that use as soon as possible. Projections to halve fossil fuel use by 2050 would be disastrous. Well before that year, the ocean pH will reach a point where those organisms that have carbonate skeletons — which make up a substantial portion of single-celled marine organisms — will die. An environmental catastrophe, perhaps the likes of which this world has not seen since the meteorite killed the dinosaurs (and single-celled carbonate organisms in the oceans) would be the result.
The only solution that I see that can realistically decrease fossil fuel fast enough is nuclear power (or hydrogen fuel produced by nuclear power), but this has been so seriously politicized that there is very little rational dialog. The one country that is dealing with the issues rationally, and really ramping up its nuclear power is China, and it is likely to take over that business, much as China now controls much of solar and wind technology.
Kevin McCartney
Retired geology professor
Caribou
