Response to "'Oil Changed Texas' and so can Renewable"

The blogger won't let me comment on other people's posts because "I'm not a team member"... so this is what I wrote as a comment to Aziz's post:

I completely agree with Aziz in regards to the quotation, "creativity and a risk taking attitude". For instance, when I went to the museum i took note that in 1900 Texas was only producing 836,000 barrels of oil while in 1950 Texas was producing 817,842,000 barrels of oil. In my opinion, any new technology requires time, entrepreneurship, government funds, and demand in order to enable that technology to be successful in the short and long term. Yes, the whole exhibit was about Texas and big oil (there was even a plaque that said ExxonMobil had donated money to make the exhibit possible) but that doesn’t mean that we should lose sight of the similarities between our increasing energy demand during the early 20th century and our current energy crisis. There was a movie at the exhibit that showed that Texas did not invent oil but rather redefined the production of oil, especially after WWII’s energy demands on the U.S. Likewise, as one of the leading energy consumers in the U.S., Texas should once again redefine alternative sources of energy other that will reduce our dependency on oil. California, as the current leading energy consumer in the U.S., has already proven that it’s on its way towards being a less oil-dependent energy consumer, as there are many incentives and tax rebates in that state for solar and wind energies.

In the museum there was this quotation of an East Texas farmer that read:

“Damn the oil, I want water!”

In much the same way today we are blindly ignoring free sources of renewable energy, such as wind and solar. If we can take advantage of wind and solar energies as much as the East Texas farmers did during the early 20th century, we will be energy producing leader as much so as we were in the past. Like the museum exhibit read, “creativity and a risk taking attitude” are what allowed Texas to become an energy leader then and will propel us as to being a clean energy leader in the future.