Two recent announcements about university projects say a lot about our messed up priorities as a society. The School of Energy Resources got $15 million from Hess Corporation to buy equipment for research into rock physics and fluid flows. Then a few days ago, the university announced the $44 million renovation and expansion of the athletics center.
Let’s think about this money. The athletics program is getting almost three times the amount that the School of Energy Resources received. To me, that makes no sense.
When you get out of bed in the morning, you’re already using fossil fuel energy. Your house is probably heated by a natural gas furnace, and if not, then it’s heated by electricity which, in Wyoming, was almost certainly generated by a coal-fired power plant. Every time you flip a light switch, it uses energy.
When you go to the grocery store, you buy vegetables, cereal or bread that certainly weren’t grown or manufactured here in Laramie. They were transported here by diesel-fueled trucks. It should be obvious that cheap abundant energy is needed for our First World standard of living.
Of course, many of us wish things were different. There are definitely drawbacks to burning fossil fuels, and I would love to see more use of renewable energy. However, right now, we need them. In the future, we’ll probably still need them. To go on having reasonably cheap oil and gas, we need research like what the School of Energy Resources is doing now.
What allows us to have easy access to cell phones and computers? What allows us to live in warmth and comfort even when it’s snowing and freezing? What has shrunk the globe and allowed international business to explode?
Well, obviously, it’s the football team.
