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No matter what the U.S. does or doesn’t do, it will have little or no effect on global warming. The United States represents less than 5 percent of the global population. What effect will the other 95 percent of the world’s growing population have on global warming? Alternatively, the U.S. uses about 14 percent of the total of 15.1 billion tons of fossil fuel. China uses about 31 percent of the total global amount.

About 15 percent of U.S. total commercial AC energy generation is from nuclear power. So how will 14 percent of total fossil fuel usage make a difference when the other 86 percent will continue to use fossil fuel in transportation vehicles and due to the price of fossil fuel and lack of new technology for creating commercial AC power? If the U.S. reduces its dependence on fossil fuel, the price of fossil fuel is sure to drop, which will only reinforce the economic utility for other countries to use fossil fuel. Conversely, fossil fuel reduction can only be realistically applied to commercial AC power production. Transportation fuel will still require fossil fuel and trying to convert all cars and trucks to electric or hydrogen gas will be problematic for the suppliers of battery/hydrogen fuel, the suppliers of electric/hydrogen cars and trucks, and the suppliers of commercial electrical power. The U.S. does not have the reliability or the capacity due to the age of the electrical grid to supply recharging of electric vehicles on a daily basis. Nor does the U.S. have the manufacturing capability of supplying hydrogen gas. Therefore, the U.S. must take the lead and invest and develop its nuclear and fusion power technology within the U.S. and show its feasibility of such technology to other countries. The U.S. could then export this technology, knowledge, experience, workforce and monetary funding to help other countries use this technology, thereby reducing the need for fossil fuels globally. The U.S. must rapidly develop fission and fusion power for commercial AC power. But the U.S. should not put all its eggs in one basket in regard to transportation fuel, so the U.S. should have electric, hydrogen, gasoline, diesel, propane/methane gas vehicles (trucks & cars) because of the energy diversity and it would be incapable for any energy manufacturer to manipulate these normally inelastic commodities of transportation fuels.

Richard “RPT” Torregano is an independent candidate for Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District. He can be reached at rpt2016@gmail.com.