Pursue Clean Energy Alternatives - Essay Example

I have been in the energy industry for most of my professional life and surprised to see how Americans are becoming more and more dependent on fossil fuels when “Peak Oil” had been upon us long ago. Instead, the state government of Colorado should pursue clean energy alternatives like wind and solar power. The Colorado Green Wind Farm (at Lamar, Prowers, Colorado) is a good example to reduce reliance on costly imported oil (Makhijani 31). Colorado is among the top 20 states with high potential for wind energy (at no.

11 with 481 billion kW-hours annually), enough supply to meet all the state's electricity requirements were it not for factors like intermittency and geographic location considerations. However, we need not wait for flooding like what happened in some countries (like the Philippines mentioned above) to wake us up that the effects of global warming are upon us like what Al Gore cited in his “Inconvenient Truth” movie. However, what is markedly absent from the energy debate is environmental optimism (Easterbrook, Sept. 2006) and Mike Keefe's cartoon cliché update (Denver Post, September 29, 2009) could become reality soon.

The readers of the Denver Post are not only the people of Colorado but include those of some neighboring states like Nebraska, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah, and Oklahoma. There are even some readers from as far away as Texas, Kansas, the two Dakotas, and Idaho.With a mean elevation of 6,800 feet (2,073 meters), the state of Colorado seems to be so far away from concerns like massive flooding generated by climate change from global warming effects. Furthermore, the people of this region in the United States take pride in their pristine environment and they mostly want to preserve it that way for generations to come.

A way to do that is to use clean energy.Most of the Great Plains region, to which Colorado belongs, seems safe from concerns like the floods in low-lying coastal areas of the world that are experiencing typhoons and higher sea levels. The letter to the editor appeals to the readers by first informing them of what is happening in other parts of the world (Philippines, Bangladesh, Samoa, Maldives, Pacific and Indian Oceans, etc.) that suffer from natural calamities (stronger typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.) and tries to tie phenomena like these to global warming and its result – climate change.

The editorial cartoon on September 29, 2009, may seem exaggerated for an audience in regions of the US that have high elevations from sea level (like what Colorado is) but the picture of a man who is clinging to a lone coconut tree from higher sea levels caused by unmitigated use of fossil fuels is to make the citizens of Colorado more aware that there are better energy alternatives like wind and solar.The tone and word choices in my letter are more of appeal through the power of persuasion for people to be also concerned with those in faraway places who are affected by our energy use.

I expect some of the readers to be nonchalant about what is happening in other places to be not their concern.I tried to establish (ethos) by claiming to be in the energy industry for a long period and the tone of the appeal is to gain pathos (appeal to emotion or feelings). The claim of being an energy industry professional is to emphasize my logos (knowledge) about the whole clean and renewable energy sector.