Thomas Mott Osborne: “over the last several days a great deal has been said about our national energy crisis. Unfortunately, most of the…”

“over the last several days a great deal has been said about our national energy crisis. Unfortunately, most of the commentary has centered on finding blame. At various times, the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the California legislature, energy companies, environmentalists and others have been blamed. As I see it, the main value of looking at the past is to make sure we do not repeat the same mistakes that caused the current problem. However, dwelling on the past and attempting to fix blame serves no useful purpose and actually impedes progress. What is needed now is to identify solutions and start moving toward those solutions. In my previous profession, which was coaching, there are all kinds of people that could say what went wrong and why it went wrong, but this really did not accomplish anything. What we were looking for was people with proactive ideas, because they were able to help relieve the situation. Part of the solution to the current energy crisis that would appear to benefit all factions involved would be that of ethanol production. The use of ethanol in gasoline has been proven to reduce harmful emissions by 30 to 50 percent and is a renewable source of energy. Therefore, it benefits the environment and should certainly please the environmental community. It has a potential to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by a small but significant amount, which serves our national interests and benefits consumers.”