Once again Congress is drilling big oil on the hill instead of drilling ANWR for oil.  Congress blames big oil, big oil blames OPEC, OPEC blames the futures market, traders blame instabilities around the world and the average guy blames all of them.  Too bad we can't run our cars on blame since we have so much.  Lucky for us we have an energy plan.  And what a great plan it is.  No drilling, no refining, no nukes, no coal to oil, no energy, no DUH!  The plan does include taxing the oil companies and begging our enemies to do all the things we won't do ourselves.  That ought to help, NOT.  The new plan includes suing OPEC.  Once they pick themselves up off the floor from laughing, they will simply sell their product to the rapidly growing markets in China and India and leave us pushing our cars.

So I'm pleased to announce the winner of the blame game.  The winner is everybody!  High oil, gas and electric charges are the result of our collective failure act reasonably and responsibly.  You can never fix a problem until you address the root cause.  In our struggle to balance a thriving growing economy and a prosperous society with environmental concerns we have totally screwed up both.  We still pollute but at a much higher cost.  We can fix this.  We can care for the environment and have the energy we need to maintain the highest standard of living on earth. 

This problem will not be fixed in congress.  Congress doesn't build cars, they don't drill oil, they simply provide an avenue of endless debate that results in nothing effective getting done.  Congress can help the most by getting out of the way.  I was part of the team that brought Black Berry to market.  While it is now widely accepted the wireless data market was not always so broad.  But we had a saying that helps us push on.  "Put the food in the bowl and the dogs will come".  What this means is if we develop the environmental friendly products and services we need to affordably meet our energy needs people will buy them and we will move towards energy independence and a cleaner environment.

Take for example the vehicle emissions and fuel efficiency.  We have spent more than 30 years in congress trying to clean emissions by a few parts per million and gain a couple miles per gallon.  This approach did nothing more than kick open the doors to congress and fill the congressional halls with lobbyist for and against.  All in an effort to get GM and Ford to make clean, green high mileage cars.  What would have happened if we bypassed congress, bypass car companies that won't build cars to the pollution and mileage standards sought and the people who wanted those cars 30 years ago just built them themselves?  When you try to get someone else to do what you want it will not get done.  Do it yourself.

People will say they don't know how to build a car.  Individually that is true.  But collectively we can do anything if we just do it.  How many people are in the environmental movement?  How many people don't want to fight mid-east wars for oil?  How many people are just angry at the price of gas?  How many people want energy independence? The answer is millions of people.  So do any of these millions of people have engineering and scientific skills?  Do any of them know how to prototype?  Do any of them know how to run a factory?  Do any of them have deep pockets to finance a new car company?  Instead of beating our heads against the brick wall of congress we need for individuals to bring their piece of the solution puzzle to the table so we can connect them to the other pieces.  And you will have the cars you seek in a few years not decades.  

Cars are not the only new products that can change our fuel use and pollution rates so don't write yourself out of the picture if you don't have skills in that area.  There is plenty you can do no matter who you are.  Just as an example look at Map Quest and GPS navigation.  If 1 million people avoid just 1 extra mile of driving per year due to these technologies keeping them from making a wrong turn we save 1 million miles of driving.  At 20 miles per gallon that works out to 50,000 gallons of gas or 6 tanker trucks.  Now we are not going to GPS ourselves out of this problem but it is a piece of the puzzle brought to the table by people who probably don't know much about building cars.

While I don't support congress mandating fuel standards or light bulbs I certainly welcome new technologies to the market place. Why is the government forcing the new compact fluorescent light bulbs yet we don't see any commercials from the manufactures of these bulbs promoting them?  We need to go back to the most powerful force on earth to fix our energy and environmental problems, the free enterprise system.  I can't count the times I have heard people say they wish they could invent something.  They say that all the good inventions are done.  Well the next Bill Gates will be the people who invent our way out of this situation.  

Here is the part the environmentalist won't want to hear.  We can't sit idle while we wait for you to bring new technologies to the market place. We cannot shut the country down waiting for solutions.  Our homes need heating and we need to get to work.  Until we build a better "mouse trap" we need to ensure we have the energy needed to move forward.  So for now, we need to allow each of the oil companies to build a new refinery. We need to fast track 50 nuclear power plants.  We need to drill ANWR and the continental shelf.  We need to start coal to liquid fuels.  

We went through this once in the 70s and the technologies started to come to market. They were crude and not all that effective but we started to make the changes to clean cheap energy and the ability to maintain our lifestyle.  The reason we stopped was the price of oil dropped like a rock.  We quickly went back to old ways and old habits.  If we take the actions mentioned above the price of oil will drop and it will be real easy to go back to old ways.  But for the people who really care about energy independence and a clean environment you have the power to effect change and must stay on the new track regardless the price of oil.  "Put the food in the bowl and the dogs will come".