Time to invest in renewable energy

To the editor:

Since the summer, filling an economy car has gone from costing an anxiety-inducing $35 to a barely-felt $15 and lawmakers across the board have been throwing out their shoulders patting one another on the back.

The installation of the Keystone Pipeline will make transporting oil from Canadian stores faster and cheaper and we will be tempted as a nation to celebrate our emancipation from crippling gas prices and our dependence on foreign fuel supplies. Except we won't be independent at all.

Whether from OPEC lowering its prices until we are once again putty in its hands or from our own fuel supplies petering out, this price independence will not last forever - it won't even last long.

In the near future, our heads will spin as the numbers on the gas station boards skyrocket, all because we failed to foresee one critical detail - a country cannot attain independence if it practices dependence, in this instance on natural resources. We cripple ourselves financially by investing our tax dollars in metal chutes that will eventually run dry and with it our finances.

Instead of investing money in becoming more dependent upon a finite resource, we should push our representatives to fund a permanent emancipation in the form of localized renewable energy sources. Such projects will not only sever the leash of finite resources that threatens to strangle us, but will create countless long-term jobs for Americans everywhere. It's time to cut the cord.

Brenna Deerberg

Cedar Rapids