So, Now What?

The other night President Obama put the full force of his office into play and told all of us that he was royally ticked off with BP. The next day, BP found some spare change and pledged to put the $20 billion that it found into a fund that would pay the costs of the clean-up. Good thing, no doubt.

But with thousands of barrels of oil each day still spilling into the Gulf one mile beneath the surface, there is more at stake than the economic effect of this unprecedented disaster. So, now what?

Political observers are wondering if the disaster will energize the push to move more aggressively toward alternative energy sources that has been stalled on Capitol Hill. I think that if the one and only positive thing that comes from this debacle is that Congress begins to act like it wants to be a steward for the future of America and its citizens and not just a consumer of political chits and develop a real energy policy then that's great.

Because alternative energy needs some policy guidance. Business can't operate in a dark room, not knowing what whim it will bump into next. Already wind energy is struggling in this confusion, according to an article in Renewable Energy World.

But the wind sector may have gotten a shot in the arm. Virginia has reasonable potential to generate power through wind resources, according to analysis done by the Department of Energy. Of course there are problems with wind energy production. Some of the best locations in the state also are some of the most beautiful such as the Virginia Beach area and our mountain locations.

That said, Virginia did recently sign on to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) along with nine other east coast states to form the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium. You go, Gov. McDonnell; now you're making sense.

But as anyone who has ever had the misfortune to be party to a MOU, you know that it makes for good PR, but not necessarily great working partnership that are truly effective. What has to happen now is residents of Virginia who want our state to lead or to at least walk real closely behind a leader must make their voices heard in Richmond and in their county governments. There's going to be stiff opposition to the placing of windmills in just about anywhere, let alone pristine places in the Commonwealth.

Maybe they don't have to be sited in our most beautiful places; maybe wind energy can be generated with less intrusion into our wild spaces. I don't know. But just blindly blocking construction through environmental NIMBYism is not going to help us get cleaner energy.