Hope Amid the Doom and Gloom

A steady diet of economic and business news can dampen the mood of the most optimistic among us.

One of greatest examples of downright stupidity is our country's dependence on foreign energy sources.  In essence, we are paying money for foreign oil only to see some of those dollars used to fund terrorist activities against us.  That's analagous to handing a perpetrator the gun with which to rob or even shoot us.

But, there are signs of promise and hope emerging; and they are not emanating from Washington, DC.  Rather, the private sector is bringing forth new sources of power such wind farms, battery-powered vehicles, compressed natural gas from shale, and Bloom energy.  The latter is fascinating as Bloom boxes eventually may be the energy source one day to power our buildings and homes. 

Necessity truly is the mother of invention.  Even someone as diabolical as Adolph Hitler had his German engineers develop air-cooled engines, eventually used in Volkswagens, to foster greater fuel efficiency and develop the process of liquifaction to extract oil from coal to develop a new source for fuel.

Despite the decrease in the number of graduates coming out of our engineering schools, America can be a major player in the new energy era.  For unlike other cultures, our country promotes and rewards innovation, entrepreneurship, and risking taking.  Though some of the energy initiatives cited above may require government support and funding, knowing that our country's creative thinking is still at work is both reassuring and promising. 

Finally, like the great minds that collaborated on the "Manhattan Project", which produced the dreaded atom bomb, this effort will require the best and brightest from many nations and cultures.