Look up Roger Duncan in Austin, Tx. Also Pliny Fisk. The point is that there are people who have worked brilliantly to create solutions to the need for energy independence for the past 30 years and they have the financial record keeping to prove the case that these are workable methods.
In the mid-1980s, the citizens of Austin began electing people to the city council with a vision, led by Roger Duncan and citizen activists like Shudde Fath, now 90. They obviated the need for the city-owned electric utility to finance a whole new, nearly billion dollar, power plant by instituting conservation economics. The city created incentive programs so homeowners could afford better insulation and other home improvements that could lighten the overall load on the electric grid. Zoning codes were adjusted so that green builders would be able to compete. Green Building, in fact arose from this origin.
When a public policy is put in place, it immediately attracts critics that want the financial record to show benefit. Voters want to see this. Over time, if policies do not show that they work, they are voted out with the elected leaders who believed in them.
In Austin, as well as in a number of other cities, a whole range of such policies are awaiting White House recognition for the value of time tested solutions that could become the basis for national energy policy- and should. You don't need geniuses in Washington to invent something that has already been invented.
- by
Stuart Heady
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