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GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Two new speakers at Friday’s Energy Forum & Expo drew crowds of hundreds as they spoke about changes in rural and urban America.
Charles Stenholm
Former Congressman Charles Stenholm knows exactly how the energy industry can affect America’s farmers and rural areas. He represented vast swaths of west Texas, including Abilene and the surrounding towns, in his 13 terms in the House of Representatives, from 1979 to 2005, and is still a farmer at heart.
Congressman Stenholm was among the five speakers at Friday’s Energy Forum & Expo at Two Rivers Convention Center. In an interview prior to his speech, he discussed the importance of rural America in the future of energy production and exploration and the challenges that the country will face in a future that will see us demand even more resources than we currently do.
“We have to recognize that America is where we are today because we have learned how to use energy most efficiently than any country in the world,” he said. “The oil and gas industry has played a key role in that up to now and will for the next 20 or 30 years, if we’re going to continue to grow. And when you talk about energy production, it’s not produced in urban America. It’s produced in rural America.”
Stenholm said that he recognizes and supports the need for alternative energy sources, including wind, but that an intelligent approach to energy production is to consider all potential sources.
“We’re in support of all alternative fields,” he emphasized. “Looking to the future, we have to recognize that we’re going to be using as much and more oil and gas in 2030 as we are today, no matter how much we develop alternative fields. That’s going to happen. But that doesn’t mean we ought not to be developing, putting the money into reserves and development technology. Rural America, agriculture and forestry all, I believe, have a part to play in providing the alternative energy, some of which haven’t even been discovered yet.”
Stenholm is adamant about his support for discovering and developing new and better technologies to not only use in energy production and exploration but in agriculture as well.
“The same people that oppose drilling for oil and gas also oppose technology for the production of food,” he said. “Biofuels, bio-foods, GMOs. They have every right to their opinion, but that’s a major concern to agriculture because if we can’t use technology, new and different ways to produce food and feed and fiber, the world is going to have a major problem. And since we’re a significant part of the world, it’s going to turn on us.”
Stenholm pointed to the issue of water as one way in which agriculture and technology are coming together to develop a more efficient means of extracting resource without damaging the environment in the long-term. He said that rural America’s most pressing concern now is drought, not simply in rural west Texas but all over agricultural America, including California.
“We have to find the most efficient way of using the water supplies that we have. That’s going to require a continuation of research and development, research on how to do more with less. Some exciting work going on in agriculture now is in breeding drought-resistant plants. There are companies that believe that we’re within five years of having a drought-tolerant corn. Think for a moment what would mean.”
Stenholm believes that agriculture, rural America and the oil and gas industry all have significant roles to play in the advancement of our nation’s economy, and that supporting them and their efforts to develop more efficient and productive technology is the key to a self-reliant nation.
“Look, you can’t produce oil and gas without food, feed and fiber. And you can’t produce food, feed and fiber without oil and gas. (Farmers and oil and gas companies) are both minority interests. Therefore, maybe we ought to work together. All 300 million Americans need what we produce on the farm and what we produce on the oil rigs. You cannot do without us.”
Wendell Cox
Wendell Cox is an international policy consultant and is the principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm specializing in demographics, public policy and transportation. His speech centered on the challenges that the world is facing, including increased urbanization and the resulting increase in suburbanization; the attendant increase in energy demands; and the need to develop energy from all sources, including fossil fuels, alternative energies, nuclear and coal.
In an interview prior to his speech, Cox elaborated on his research on demographic changes, population mobility and housing affordability.
“Suburbanization is universal,” he said. “It is going to continue. One of the great advantages of suburbanization is that it allows land prices to be lower, which is why we have seen such a huge expansion in this country of home ownership from 40 percent before World War II to about 70 percent or 65 percent today.”
Cox is critical of the anti-sprawl movement that has become popular in urban areas like Portland, Ore.; Seattle; California; Florida; and Las Vegas. He believes that such activism has only encouraged people to migrate elsewhere.
“All sorts of places like Grand Junction are growing,” he said. “Even if you didn’t have the oil and gas business here, you’d still be growing. California alone has lost 1.2 million domestic migrants — or people who move from one place to another — in the last seven, eight years. The biggest thing that has killed California is housing affordability. People are moving out of these areas and are going to places like Texas, Colorado, the Midwest. Indianapolis is growing as fast as the Sunbelt cities.”
According to Cox, the South, mountain West and parts of Florida will benefit the most from this mass migration from the more expensive areas in the coastal West and Northeast. Data tracking migration has not caught up with the most recent upheavals in the economy, but Cox believes that while mobility may have slowed somewhat in response to the recession, changes will need to be made in the former boom economies of California and Oregon before migration can be reversed.
“Historically, housing (costs are) three times income,” he explained. “Well, it got to 11 times in Los Angeles, 10 times in the Bay area, and in Sacramento, Riverside and Fresno it got to seven, way beyond anything that we have ever seen in this country. But if housing were to return to three times income, which would still be a huge decline in California, then all of a sudden that state might become competitive again. But as long as housing is more expensive in California, I think we will continue to see people moving out.”
Cox said that land use restrictions is key to the question of housing affordability. “Unless Grand Junction finds ways to allow land to be developed consistent with demands, you’re going to see prices (like California),” he said. “It isn’t that people are moving here that’s raising your housing prices, it’s that you’re not allowing the development to accommodate it. If you want house prices to be affordable so your children can also live here, you have got to allow land to be developed.”
Charles Stenholm
Former Congressman Charles Stenholm knows exactly how the energy industry can affect America’s farmers and rural areas. He represented vast swaths of west Texas, including Abilene and the surrounding towns, in his 13 terms in the House of Representatives, from 1979 to 2005, and is still a farmer at heart.
Congressman Stenholm was among the five speakers at Friday’s Energy Forum & Expo at Two Rivers Convention Center. In an interview prior to his speech, he discussed the importance of rural America in the future of energy production and exploration and the challenges that the country will face in a future that will see us demand even more resources than we currently do.
“We have to recognize that America is where we are today because we have learned how to use energy most efficiently than any country in the world,” he said. “The oil and gas industry has played a key role in that up to now and will for the next 20 or 30 years, if we’re going to continue to grow. And when you talk about energy production, it’s not produced in urban America. It’s produced in rural America.”
Stenholm said that he recognizes and supports the need for alternative energy sources, including wind, but that an intelligent approach to energy production is to consider all potential sources.
“We’re in support of all alternative fields,” he emphasized. “Looking to the future, we have to recognize that we’re going to be using as much and more oil and gas in 2030 as we are today, no matter how much we develop alternative fields. That’s going to happen. But that doesn’t mean we ought not to be developing, putting the money into reserves and development technology. Rural America, agriculture and forestry all, I believe, have a part to play in providing the alternative energy, some of which haven’t even been discovered yet.”
Stenholm is adamant about his support for discovering and developing new and better technologies to not only use in energy production and exploration but in agriculture as well.
“The same people that oppose drilling for oil and gas also oppose technology for the production of food,” he said. “Biofuels, bio-foods, GMOs. They have every right to their opinion, but that’s a major concern to agriculture because if we can’t use technology, new and different ways to produce food and feed and fiber, the world is going to have a major problem. And since we’re a significant part of the world, it’s going to turn on us.”
Stenholm pointed to the issue of water as one way in which agriculture and technology are coming together to develop a more efficient means of extracting resource without damaging the environment in the long-term. He said that rural America’s most pressing concern now is drought, not simply in rural west Texas but all over agricultural America, including California.
“We have to find the most efficient way of using the water supplies that we have. That’s going to require a continuation of research and development, research on how to do more with less. Some exciting work going on in agriculture now is in breeding drought-resistant plants. There are companies that believe that we’re within five years of having a drought-tolerant corn. Think for a moment what would mean.”
Stenholm believes that agriculture, rural America and the oil and gas industry all have significant roles to play in the advancement of our nation’s economy, and that supporting them and their efforts to develop more efficient and productive technology is the key to a self-reliant nation.
“Look, you can’t produce oil and gas without food, feed and fiber. And you can’t produce food, feed and fiber without oil and gas. (Farmers and oil and gas companies) are both minority interests. Therefore, maybe we ought to work together. All 300 million Americans need what we produce on the farm and what we produce on the oil rigs. You cannot do without us.”
Wendell Cox
Wendell Cox is an international policy consultant and is the principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm specializing in demographics, public policy and transportation. His speech centered on the challenges that the world is facing, including increased urbanization and the resulting increase in suburbanization; the attendant increase in energy demands; and the need to develop energy from all sources, including fossil fuels, alternative energies, nuclear and coal.
In an interview prior to his speech, Cox elaborated on his research on demographic changes, population mobility and housing affordability.
“Suburbanization is universal,” he said. “It is going to continue. One of the great advantages of suburbanization is that it allows land prices to be lower, which is why we have seen such a huge expansion in this country of home ownership from 40 percent before World War II to about 70 percent or 65 percent today.”
Cox is critical of the anti-sprawl movement that has become popular in urban areas like Portland, Ore.; Seattle; California; Florida; and Las Vegas. He believes that such activism has only encouraged people to migrate elsewhere.
“All sorts of places like Grand Junction are growing,” he said. “Even if you didn’t have the oil and gas business here, you’d still be growing. California alone has lost 1.2 million domestic migrants — or people who move from one place to another — in the last seven, eight years. The biggest thing that has killed California is housing affordability. People are moving out of these areas and are going to places like Texas, Colorado, the Midwest. Indianapolis is growing as fast as the Sunbelt cities.”
According to Cox, the South, mountain West and parts of Florida will benefit the most from this mass migration from the more expensive areas in the coastal West and Northeast. Data tracking migration has not caught up with the most recent upheavals in the economy, but Cox believes that while mobility may have slowed somewhat in response to the recession, changes will need to be made in the former boom economies of California and Oregon before migration can be reversed.
“Historically, housing (costs are) three times income,” he explained. “Well, it got to 11 times in Los Angeles, 10 times in the Bay area, and in Sacramento, Riverside and Fresno it got to seven, way beyond anything that we have ever seen in this country. But if housing were to return to three times income, which would still be a huge decline in California, then all of a sudden that state might become competitive again. But as long as housing is more expensive in California, I think we will continue to see people moving out.”
Cox said that land use restrictions is key to the question of housing affordability. “Unless Grand Junction finds ways to allow land to be developed consistent with demands, you’re going to see prices (like California),” he said. “It isn’t that people are moving here that’s raising your housing prices, it’s that you’re not allowing the development to accommodate it. If you want house prices to be affordable so your children can also live here, you have got to allow land to be developed.”
