Tyson Slocum fears the U.S. is overusing oil and wants individuals to change their mindset about energy efficiency and clean energy, he said at a speaking event for the AU Roosevelt Institute on Tuesday night.
Slocum, the director of the non-profit organization Public Citizen Climate and Energy, said he wants to promote more ways of addressing climate change.
“With the US being the third biggest producer of crude oil, we are consuming too much oil without being efficient enough,” Tyson said.
Public Citizen was founded in 1971 and is a non-partisan organization with 80 employees. Public Citizen pushes for the implementation of green energy policies on a federal level. Slocum personally handles the energy and climate policy branch of Public Citizen.
He explained that in comparison to other countries, the U.S. is lagging in technology, manufacturing, goods and services.
“We need smarter ways to use energy more wisely,” Slocum said. “Our population density has increased 87 percent since 1950, and the world is changing faster than we can adjust to it.”
Many countries abroad have tremendous economies that are growing rapidly and that are maturing faster than the U.S., Slocum said.
“Foreign countries like China, Japan and Germany [are] jumping ahead and moving fast with their economies,” he said. “They have the resources, and we don’t, so it is hard to compete with far better, more mature places, while the US is not able to compete because of the economic crisis.”
Public Citizen is promoting a strategy called “Feed and Tariff” to promote small-scale solar power in parts of the U.S. so the nation does not have to rely on foreign resources.
During the question-and-answer session after Slocum’s speech, Max Tani, a freshman in School of Public Affairs asked what she should do to have an impact on the world and society.
Slocum responded that there are many organizations that are working on sustainability issues that she could join. He also said individuals should focus on promoting a better mindset in others to help weatherize households and their communities.
He would rather see money invested in better tools to weatherize households and in clean power stations with rooftop solar panels than see it invested in a power plan.
“The long-term issue with green jobs is the technology and the manufacturing of solar panels and wind turbines with energy-efficient manufacturing items,” he said.
He also said he hopes sustainability initiatives can become more practical in the near future.
“We want to try and make [green energy] more affordable,” Slocum said. “We are falling behind, and we aren’t able to prioritize.”
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