The good, the bad and the ugly all meet at energy. The message of the eighth annual Siena-Concordia Globalization Conference at Siena College was that the global spread of energy is needed if we want to meet the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals by 2015, even though those goals do not mention energy.
Part of the conference was about the Solar Electric Light Fund, a nonprofit that installs solar panels to bring electricity and energy self-sufficiency to some of those 1.2 billion people worldwide who still don't have access to electricity. Other organizations also do good in similar fashion.
Meanwhile, money-driven executives at PetroAmazonas are salivating at the chance to dig into the oil fields located under Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. And, although indigenous groups like the Waorani and Kichwa see these companies as threats to land, the people are in need of basic education and health care that could be affordable if these lands are opened.
And, then, there is the evil with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, vouching his country's nuclear program is for the development of energy. If true, with the burning of a kilogram of uranium producing 20,000 times more energy than a kilogram of coal, it is hard to fault Ahmadinejad.
As the world's population continues to grow, there is going to be further demand on energy and, with the competing actions as discussed above, who knows what the final solution will be.
Dylan Lee
Albany
