By Gary Robertson, Federal Way resident

I would like to respond to Leo J. Thoennes’ July 5 letter to the editor (“Our nation’s energy crisis”).

Mr. Thoennes made a couple of good points — but at the same time, I wish to challenge him on a couple of other points. Like him, I am also concerned about the energy crisis as well as the rising cost of oil because it affects the pocketbooks of consumers worldwide. But I am more concerned about the environmental effects of global warming.

There are probably a multitude of causes for our energy crisis led by worldwide demand (specifically, China and India) and speculative investors. Back in Economics 101, we learned the law of supply and demand: When demand goes up and supply doesn’t match the increase, the price will (inevitably) go up. Sen. Maria Cantwell has been one of our most proactive leaders in dealing with the energy crisis. I do believe her because I believe we own very little of the “known” oil reserves and drilling in Alaska (ANWR) would have a negligible effect on the price of gas.

One must also remember if drilling were approved, it wouldn’t happen tomorrow. The Energy Information Administration said it would be 10 years (due to the remote area, the need to build roads to bring the equipment in and pipelines to get the oil to the nearest port, etc.) before we would have the oil. Environmental concerns (contrary to what he said, you can’t drill without having some negative impact on the environment, and ANWR is a sensitive environment) are the primary reasons Congress has rejected the Republicans’ numerous attempts to open it up to drilling.

In the recent energy bill passed by Congress, fuel economy standards were finally raised to 35 miles per gallon; however, the two drawbacks are the automakers have until 2020 to meet the new standard, and it took Congress 33 years to pass the law (due to the opposition by the automakers and the successful efforts by their lobbyists to defeat any attempts to increase the fuel economy requirements).

It may be a case of “too little, too late…but better late than never.” We also need to use more energy alternatives (i.e. build more wind farms and harness more solar energy) because the wind/sun is free and has no negative impacts on the environment. The only criticism I have of Senator Cantwell is her promoting the use of corn to make ethanol because I think that was a mistake.

I also believe we need to become energy self-sufficient, but I do not agree that nuclear power plants are the answer. The Republican presidential candidate obviously thinks that is the answer as well and that is why he is not getting my vote. If elected, John McCain has stated that he supports construction of 45 nuclear plants by 2030 with a long-term goal of building another 55 in the future. I was shocked at this announcement. This is putting the “cart before the horse” because, like he said, “we will need to solve complex problems of moving/storing materials that will always need safeguarding.” That is “easier said than done” and is probably the understatement of the year.

What McCain and Thoennes overlooked are the serious problems with achieving this goal, which include: 1) Loss of knowledge and skills in building these plants (safely) because of three stagnant decades; and 2) finding a location to (safely) store spent nuclear waste.

McCain and Thoennes may have forgotten, but most Americans have not: That we almost had a catastrophic nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979. When the Russians had their disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, it clearly demonstrated the major consequences of what could have happened at Three Mile Island had it turned into the “China Syndrome.” Americans lost confidence in their government to build and operate nuclear power plants safely, and that is why no nuclear power plants have been built in America in over 30 years.

Just because the French government can safely operate nuclear power plants does not necessarily mean we can and right now, the risks outweigh the benefits. Since the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada –— which is the site the government picked to store nuclear waste — is not operational, the last thing we need is more nuclear plants creating more nuclear waste that we don’t know what to do with.