Hope came from the Pacific last Friday when the state of Hawaii, according to an Associated Press report, became the first in the nation to require solar water heaters in new homes.

My bi-partisan heart (yes, I do have one) swelled even more when I read further that the governor who signed the bill, Linda Lingle, is a Republican.

Moments later, that hope evaporated and i had a bi-partisan heart attack as I continued to read The New York Times.

This article reported that the U.S. Dept. of the Interior; known for failing to collect money owed the taxpayers by oil and gas companies drilling on public lands; known for ignoring public opinion and trying to increase the number of snow mobiles allowed in Yellowstone National Park; known for ignoring previous "roadless" rules and bowing to timber companies to allow roads into pristine forests; this department had suddenly got religion.

And for what?

Why to protect the environment of course.

And to do that, the administration put a two-year freeze on all solar energy project applications on public lands.

The reason given is a concern for the impact pipelines and infrastructure would have on native fauna, like the desert tortoise.

If I were the suspicious type (and I am), I might conclude that about the only time this administration, which, no doubt by sheer coincidence, happens to be run by two former oil executives and whose Secretary of State has an oil tanker named after her, cares most about protecting the environment when it also protects the interests of the oil and gas industry.

They have good reason to be afraid for their entrenched wealthy friends.

According to the Times, many of the 119 million acres of taxpayer-owned land in sunny places like Arizona, Nevada and southern California are ideal for solar power.

Since 2005, more than 130 solar power proposals have been filed with the government, most of which call for erecting such facilities on public land to help cut costs.

Unlike the companies that pump and produce oil and natural gas, and which seem to suck all the air out of the government subsidy room, many of these solar power companies are start-ups -- you know, the kind of small, entrepreneurial businesses President Bush also cites as the kind needed to buck-up our flagging economy.

Where the existing proposals to be built, they could cover more than 1 million acres and have the potential to power more than 20 million homes, according to the Times.

Certainly, no tree-hugger worth his salt is going to suggest that one million acres of public property be developed without a thorough review, but freezing all new applications just sends panic through a young industry which might ultimately save our bacon.

Just ask our local Congressman, Jim Gerlach, R-6th Dist.

On Friday, Gerlach delivered the House Republican Conference Weekly Radio Address, according to a timely press release, the subject of which was "the need for Congress to start working together on a National Energy Initiative."

According to the release, Gerlach said: “Decades of relying on foreign oil from the Middle East and unstable regimes across the globe, while refusing to produce more of our own resources, have resulted in the average price of gas soaring past the $4 per-gallon mark.”

Putting a two-year freeze on all new solar power plant applications on public lands doesn't sound like an effort to "produce more of our own resources."

Most of the solar plants in the U.S. use "concentrating" technology by which the sun's rays are concentrated with mirrors to heat a synthetic mixture of oil and water to make steam to power turbines.

But photovoltaic plants, which directly convert sunlight into electricity are up and coming. According to the Times, Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006.

So if you want to get away from $4 gas, as Mr. Gerlach suggests, why not "think outside the pump."

Instead of trying to open up off-shore drilling while refusing the make oil and gas companies drill on the public land where they already have leases (another partisan split in Congress; see if you can guess which party is on which side), why not promote something that could replace it completely?

The nation's first hydrogen pump station just opened in Los Angeles and electric cars are looming on the market place.
Having already had a functional electric car that it pulled from the market in a brilliant display of entrepreneurial foresight, (See "Who Killed the Electric Car?") Detroit is now rushing to catch up to the Japanese in creating what it had already created, a viable electric car.

My personal fantasy is to pull my all-electric car into my driveway and plug it into my personal solar-power generator and laugh all the way past the Exxon station.

While we're fiddling around on our knees to the oil companies, other countries like German and Britain are reading the writing on the atmosphere and getting ahead of us. (See my posts on 6/26 and 6/19)

If you think none of this is the government's business, consider that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Thursday that he will lead his country to increase its renewable energy use 10-fold by 2020.

For an investment of $200 billion (the equivalent of what we pay for a long afternoon in Iraq) he envisions the U.K. cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly 20 percent and oil dependency by 7 percent, and creating some 260,000 green-collar jobs.

Notably lacking in sunny days, Britain will instead make the most of its particular resources, its windy coastline, and use wind power to meet those goals according to this story by Bloomberg News Service.

So just as I tried to come to terms with the idea that the Bush administration had once again crushed hope into dust, I read this article in Scientific American.

It appears that some of the big businesses the administration thinks it has to protect have a longer view than the next quarter's returns.

Three companies that got rich envisioning the future, IBM, Intel and Hewlett Packard, have all made major investments in solar energy, the magazine reported.

First out of the box was IBM, which has "plans to make solar panels covered with a thin film of chemical compounds. The idea is that the film, when applied to different surfaces such as glass or brick, can produce solar energy more efficiently than conventional silicon wafer–based solar cells—which are made of materials similar to those used to fabricate computer chips. (That's right—a company built on chips based on silicon is trying to get the world to move away from using it in solar cells)" the magazine reported.

(And here you thought I was the only purveyor of journalistic sarcasm).

"Also last week, Intel spun off a new solar tech company called SpectraWatt, which was born with $50 million in investment capital from Intel, Cogentrix Energy LLC, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund and Solon AG," according to Scientific American.
And the trifecta: "Meanwhile, HP earlier this month began licensing technology to Xtreme Energetics, Inc., in Livermore, Calif., designed to help that start-up company deliver rooftop solar energy systems that produce twice as much energy as conventional solar panels at half the cost."

Hmmm, twice as much energy at half the cost.

That's almost reason to hope....