Author Spotlight
Ukraine is currently in the fight of their lives for human rights and freedom of democracy, but under the surface is a war of energy.
We are in an energy crisis — sanctions imposed on Russian oil and natural gas have exposed our dependence on fossil fuels.
Now is the time to make our transition to clean and renewable energy sources. We are already behind on the path towards restoring the environment.
Russia is a petrostate — its economy relies heavily on petroleum and natural gas sales. By taking advantage of Russia’s entanglement with Ukraine, having the U.S. cut off these ties while being self-sufficient in clean energy would not only benefit the war efforts in Ukraine but also in the U.S.’s own backyard — environmentally and economically.
If there weren’t already good enough reasons to move toward clean energy — the projected 20 million jobs that solar energy will create by 2050, a possible $2,585 of savings every year on your energy bill, new steps taken in environmental sciences, better air quality especially for those who suffer from poor air quality and indigenous sovereignty gained from the blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline — then the current inflation sure has to get people’s attention.
After all, Americans have been staring down the record-high prices on the gas pump for the past few months.
With the exception of the Build Back Better plan before it was shot down by the Senate last year — thanks to West Virginia senator Joe Manchin — the government has done very little to address the climate crisis.
The best thing high schoolers can do to change that is to persist. Keep talking about the climate crisis, especially in connection with Russia and Ukraine. If you’re into investing, put some money on major wind and solar power companies such as Ormat Technologies and NextEra Energy. Convince your parents to look into electric cars.
With that being said, here’s a fun fact: solar and wind energy are widely regarded to be more affordable in the long term than fossil fuels. Electric vehicles are included in that affordability — they’ve been shown to cost people 60% less on fuel compared to internal combustion engine vehicles.
Conveniently, Kansas is geologically perfect for capitalizing on solar and wind energy.
Currently, 43% of Kansas’s total energy is attributed to wind energy. It’s in the top five windiest states and top 10 sunniest states, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, both of which are critically important renewable and inexhaustible resources.
We’ve already brought in more than $11 billion in capital investment and made over 5,000 jobs in wind farms alone. It’s projected that the Midwest plains could rack up more than $22 billion in revenue through wind and solar energy combined. More than a Band-Aid for inflation — a promising and profit-making solution.
These numbers aren’t completely outlandish, and neither is the possibility of change. A study conducted by political scientists Leah Stokes at Arizona State University and Hanna L. Breetz at University of California revealed that major energy crises often pave the way for new legislation.
“What we found was, overwhelmingly, these policies were passed during energy crises,” Stokes said to The New York Times. “It’s when energy is expensive or hard to get that Americans begin to realize that they ought to look for some new way.”
Despite understandable gripes that the switch to clean energy can’t just happen overnight and it takes years of investments, the U.S. has prolonged it enough.
The government could always start investing more in domestic oil fracking and lease more land for that purpose, but energy analysts agree that it’d only be a short-run solution to deflate the current gas prices that are impacting the majority of Americans.
We can either become exponentially worse by expanding a slowly-dying industry or embrace a late start on the clean energy industry that could create our future.
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