There Are Some Good Government Entities

Guest blog by S. A. Shelley: The U.S. Federal Government is a huge organization that is staffed by some very bright people. There are also nearly 1,000 advisory committees in Washington, comprising leaders from industry, science and the arts. For the most part, the advisory committees concern themselves with publicly available information and have public meetings, but there are a few which require security clearance and concern themselves with confidential matters of state. These advisory committees are a valuable resource upon which the Federal Government can call to review policies and assist with formulating strategies.

Full disclosure, I was honoured to have been appointed to and serve on the 7th Charter of the Department of Commerce Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Committee (REEEAC). The charter for REEEAC 7 ended last week and its several important recommendations were warmly received by the U.S. government (you may contact OWOE for a full copy of the article). Follow this link to see the publicly available recommendations.

Two big concerns that are addressed by these recommendations are how to accelerate America’s energy transition while also reducing America’s reliance upon importing critical materials and components from places like China. It is no secret that, globally, China is the vampire squid with its economic tentacles in everything. Traditional products? They’ve got components from China. Renewable energy technology? China dominates in all critical areas (see OilPrice.com and Reuters). If one buys medicines from India, a pharmaceutical production powerhouse, base compounds come from China. The propellant charges used in European artillery shells that Europe supplies to Ukraine come from China (see also the aside). How on earth did the West, lands of independent judiciaries, democracy, and a free press, hang themselves to be dependent upon authoritarian states?

This dependency situation might seem hopeless, but it’s not. Awareness of the issue has been rising in the EU, in America, and in America’s Asian friends, and definitive steps are now being undertaken across several domains to do something. Furthermore, I am very optimistic in general about the West’s ability to innovate and trade its way out of this energy bind. Given enough time, we’ll lead the world in the next generation of clean energy technology. But the question now is, how much time do we have?

Vive l’Alberta libre

ASIDE: On a recent trip overseas that coincided with a port call by a US carrier battle group, I had the opportunity to share a few beverages with a couple of the carrier’s crew. The conversation was revealing, and I am now of the opinion that China does not need to continue with its massive shipbuilding programme to ensure a victory against the US navy in a future war: China just needs to wait 10 years until the bulk of the US battle fleet is in port waiting for critical maintenance.

ASIDE 2: Readers have complained to the OWOE editor that I bash Canada too often. Well, take at look at the following photo (Fig 1). This is a senior care home in Calgary that was built using municipal government funds and management. The care home has working gates, but no fence.