What Lies Beneath

I just returned from a trip to Iceland, and before I get into this post I would like to take a moment to do some free advertising on behalf of a beautiful country. If you are ever looking for a beautiful country to visit, pick Iceland (at least in the summer). The country is scenic, the food is good, the people are friendly. Put simply, Iceland is great.

On top of that, Iceland is also interesting. The mid-Atlantic rift runs beneath the country creating a hotbed of geothermal activity that supplies the country with almost all of its electricity. Iceland is almost entirely energy independent because of the steam that rises from beneath the Earth.

America cannot rely on geothermal activity to provide all of our energy needs, but just as steam boils forth from beneath the surface of Iceland's glaciers, natural gas is trapped under the shale formations of America, and that resource - though not green or renewable - is accessible to us. We should take advantage of it.

I've posted about fracking before, but it is worth mentioning again. There are downsides to fracking certainly, and in order for us to tap into our natural gas reserves in a safe manner, the industry and the process must be well-regulated, but even tight regulations would not significantly increase the cost of extracting natural gas.

Natural gas is certainly not the energy source of the future, and we should not be counting on fossil fuels to secure America's energy future, but we should make use of American energy - which also leads to the creation of American jobs - to bridge the gap between dirty coal and foreign oil and the green and alternative energy sources of the future in which we should be investing. Natural gas is dirty, but not as dirty as coal and oil, there is a method of extracting it which, if regulated, can be done safely, and most importantly there is an abundance of the substance underneath our feet, an estimated 100 years worth.

I certainly hope America doesn't need 100 year's worth of natural gas. I would prefer if we needed 0 year's worth of natural gas. In reality, we will need some unknown number of year's worth of natural gas, presumably between 0 and 100. That energy is right beneath us. While we explore and invest in our energy future, let's use what we have to help us get there.

We may not have Icelandic steam, but we've got American natural gas. It would be a shame to waste it.