At times, I wonder if pursuing my own agenda of becoming energy self-sufficient is a selfish thing to be considering. Shouldn’t I be concerned with the greater good and be putting my time and talent to helping all of us become energy self-sufficient? Well the answer to that question is - YES I am very concerned about the greater good and I KNOW that because of the wide variety of folks that government has to please that very little in the way of actually becoming energy self-sufficient will happen very quickly. The BEST way to drive wide scale energy self-sufficiency is to demonstrate how each of us as individuals can become energy self-sufficient WITHOUT relying on huge projects by the government.

I am reading a book right now called The Gridlock Economy by Michael Heller. What Heller shows is that when too many people own a small part of the whole, nothing ever gets done because consensus is required and can be blocked by one person. This concept was reiterated by the Former New York Gov. George Pataki. He was one of the few Republicans at the government energy conference February 24th headlined by Gore and Clinton. For a republican, this is odd, he said the federal government must get more involved in establishing power transmission lines. Pataki’s reasoning is similar to what is expressed in Heller’s book The Gridlock Economy - “If you try to run a wire through someone’s community that becomes about as contentious as you get,” said Pataki, and if that power is going through a state “you don’t have to take a poll, no one is going to be for it.”

This is the reason why I am pursuing energy self-sufficiency as an individual. I am not going to wait for the government to solve the gridlock problems with alternative energy. Not when the technology exists for me to become energy self-sufficient and there is appropriate legislation in place NOW that enables me to do just that.