Last weekend, my family and I went on a trip to Indiana so that I could swim in a big meet there. We left Friday night at about 5:00, so it was pretty dark by the time we crossed the border into Indiana. We were driving along, my sister and I were doing homework, my dad was asleep, etc, when all of a sudden we looked out the window and realized that we were surrounded by blinking red lights. All around us, the sky lit up red every second or two. It looked like the alien invasion was occurring, in the middle of the country around a highway in Nowhere Indiana. It turns it was Fowler Ridge Wind Farm, the sight of hundreds of wind turbines, all spinning as they generated power for use in the power grid. Needless to say, it was an amazing sight.
It reminded me of an article that I read, which can be found HERE. Basically, it says that this important guy is going to set aside government money to look into putting wind farms on the ocean, where there is lots of wind. however, talk about renewable energy tends to spark debate. The research is costly, and the choice of which energy choice will be implemented usually goes to politicians, not the science community, who would know better which ideas would work the best on the market.
Sadly, many other decisions are left to politicians that aren't in their realm of expertise. Their job is to know the law and how to get around it. At least that is what it seems like. But when they need to know something about engineering, or business, or maybe how to run a country full of technology and businesses, they come up short in all of those departments. Or they bring in an "expert" who is in their pocket anyway. I think we need more civilians in government, not just politicians. Sure, politicians know how to get elected better than anyone else, but in our nation's early history, all kinds of smart men were elected to congress and as president. Farmers, lawyers, generals, and all other kinds of trades were elected because the people thought they would do a good job. I'm not saying to draft people into congress, but I think we need a little more diversity of profession in our governing bodies. How can they represent our motives if they don't represent the actual American public?
I agree with you that sometimes congress doesn't have the background in a particular topic to vote in the best way for our country. Like you said about renewable energy, probably a scientist would make a better decision then a politician. It would benefit us to have more diversity of professions in the congress.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems though is that many americans of voting age do not do any research on candidates. When it comes to voting they just pick the guy who has the commercial they liked the best and usually this guy is a politician who has good marketing techniques, not always a candidate who could actually do our country some good.