At St. Olaf Dinner Discussion, Congressional Candidate Dan Powers Talks Energy Independence, Green Technology
During Wednesday evening's dinner conversation at St. Olaf College, Minnesota Congressional candidate Dan Powers spoke to students about green technologies, and his goal of energy independence in the United States. The major reason Powers focuses on “energy independence,” he says, is that it is “a goal that everyone can see. They can grab hold of it and work on it.” He seemed to advocate energy independence for both environmental and economic reasons.
In an ideal world, Powers said, he would advocate for only renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy. However, for the time being, he thinks nuclear power is "going to have to be in the mix." He spoke briefly about new fourth generation nuclear reactors which are designed with greatly improved safety features. Nuclear power, he said, would function well as a "good transition fuel, from the existing petroleum base towards all renewables."
Throughout the conversation, Powers spoke with a sense of urgency about developing green technologies, because many of the changes he advocates, he says, will take a significant amount of time to be fully functional even if we begin implementing them immediately. “I’m not telling you to take one specific product, or one specific track… we’re probably going to have to use all of those options,” he stated. Powers says he doesn’t care what methods or combination of methods are implemented, as long as they are effective and put into place soon. Part of the reason Powers says "we can't wait" to implement technologies which will lead towards energy independence, is that "we have so little control over our own economy... [and] our economy cannot increase without reliable and cheap energy." Powers said that many of the recent economic problems began with a spike in the price of imported petroleum.
To be energy independent, Powers also advocates a foreign policy that “makes sense. Instead of being in the Middle East protecting our access to oil, we could be dealing with them correctly… instead of interfering in their own government." Powers advocated reducing national military expenditures and using those savings towards financing green technologies. He referenced the extremely large U.S. military budget as “outrageous… we can’t afford to do that. If we can retool the way we use our military, we can put a lot of money towards infrastructure needs, towards becoming energy independent. There are so many other things we can do to invest in our own country," particularly, Powers asserted, new and revitalized home industries centered around green technologies. At the same time, Powers asserted that he is not "a complete dove," and believes in a “strong defense… but we still need to completely rethink our foreign policy and bring those troops home.” He talked about cutting the overall size of the military but increasing the training and salaries for a smaller, more select number of troops.
Powers also asserted several times that the numerous challenges facing the next generation in terms of environmental and economic issues should not be viewed "pessimistically." He spoke of the wide range of opportunities that developing green technologies and redirecting existing industries towars a greener future presented.
