By Wilson Bradfield

The May 2001 issue of Colorado Country Life, the official publication of the Colorado Rural Electric Association, contains an article, "Fueling our future," that contends that "fuel cells" are dependent upon natural gas or propane to operate. In fact, only the mini chemical plants that extracts hydrogen from the hydrocarbon gases are. Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and water, which is why our space program has been using them for years since the rocket engines also use hydrogen and oxygen. Inversely, the electrolysis of water using electricity from photovoltaic, wind power or excess "off peak" electricity from the present power plants, yields hydrogen that can be stored in tanks for later use in fuel cells or turbines. This allows these erratic power sources to become clean and reliable "on call" power.

The article also stated that wind and solar use huge acreages to operate. True, but the land could also be used for agricultural purposes simultaneously, for food and methane, a natural gas produced in the digestive tracts of animals, swamps, effluent ponds, septic tanks, etc., by anaerobic bacteria. There is a huge power production potential by using our offal and waste organic material to produce this clean-burning gas to run our automobiles and produce electricity, reducing odor and pollution, while allowing our agricultural producers to supplement their income. These methods will require considerable capital investment to implement but so do nuclear and coal power plants with their infrastructure.

The implementation of these technologies would be a step in the right direction toward reducing our contribution to global warming. The United States, with 4 percent of the world population, produces 25 percent of the global greenhouse gases, the largest percentage of any country in the world. Only those who are willfully ignorant would oppose these reasonable measures to insure the future of our progeny. History is rife with examples of the failures of societies that fail to safeguard the ecosystems that sustain them. Let us hope that we are wise enough not to fall victim to the same fate for short-term gain.

Alexis De Tocqueville, in his classic study of the United States, "Democracy in America," first published in 1840, stated, "The prospect really does frighten me that they may finally become so engrossed in a cowardly love of immediate pleasures that their interest in their own future and in that of their descendants may vanish, and that they will prefer tamely to follow the course of their destiny rather than make a sudden energetic effort necessary to set things right. My fear is that they will end up by being too unalterably fixed with the same institutions, prejudices and mores, so that mankind will stop progressing, that men will wear themselves out in trivial, futile activity and that humanity will make no advance."