Oil and the future

As a long-standing member of the Maine Oil Dealers Association, I am concerned and embarrassed by MODA’s stand against the Maine State Planning Office’s Global Climate Change Action Plan. I doubt that today there is much disagreement in the scientific community over the overwhelming evidence that the earth is warming at an unprecedented rate, and that this primarily is due to the release of carbon into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

It is imperative that we move to a renewable energy economy. I suspect that MODA’s position on this matter is due to the fear that member’s profits will be adversely affected if the GCCAP were to be implemented. This may be true for some, but I see a transition to a renewable energy economy as a potential boom for those in the energy supply industry who have the foresight to embrace it.

The opportunities are enormous for those who would retrofit out existing fossil fuel heating, electric and transportation systems with renewable passive solar, geothermal, photovoltaic, wind, tidal, hydrogen and passive annual heat storage, and other technologies.

I applaud the SPO for taking a firm stance on global warming and being in the forefront on this important issue. It would behoove MODA and its members to pull our heads out of the sand, end the denial that our products play a major role in the global warming process and begin to look around for the opportunities change will bring. To do anything else will eventually make us out to look like charlatans and fools, not unlike the reputation currently held by the tobacco industry.

I am fully aware of the paradox that this letter presents, the contradiction of being a “green” who owns an oil business. But I have always believed that the best way to bring about change is from the inside out. The damage to the environment is not the fault of individual oil dealers.

I also own a convenience store, and I sell cigarettes. I am merely meeting a demand that already exists, but is dwindling. I have to offer these products to remain viable in the short term. I respect and encourage any laws the discourage smoking, and I have diversified with a selection of natural foods that is profitable and meets a different demand.

Likewise, oil dealers who wish to remain in the energy supply industry for the long term must diversify. The tide is turning toward renewable energy. We have an obligation to our great-grandchildren’s great grandchildren to protect their environment in any way that we can. The longer MODA and others drag their feet and throw wrenches into the process of greening our energy supply, the greater the chance that the “seventh generation” will hold us in lowly contempt instead of high esteem. Joel Glatz Frontier Oil Co. South China