We are coming to a fork in the road. Which way do we want to go?  

If we stay on our present course, represented above by the blue line, electricity costs will keep on rising. The graph assumes a modest doubling of oil prices every 15 years, but it might be even more than double.

If we stay on the present path, we will have an increasingly difficult time paying our bills. Schools will pay more money for electricity, and less for education. Supermarkets will pay more for refrigeration, and farmers will get less for their produce. The hotel industry will be hit with higher electricity bills and fewer tourists. Small businesses will have a tougher time. More people will be homeless. And it will be the folks who can least afford it that will end up getting their lights turned off.

On the other hand, following the Ku‘oko‘a ala kai (path), where we use more geothermal as our primary base power, we can go to a place where we use all the renewable energy available to us and electricity costs stabilize. (See the red line above.) Our schools will be comfortable for our keiki to learn in. People will have more work opportunities and we will have fewer homeless people. Because our energy costs will be stable and reasonably priced, we can become competitive in many different areas of production. People will have more money in their pockets and so they will support local farmers, and more and younger farmers will start to grow things.

And because we helped each other to take this positive, renewable energy fork in the road, we will aloha each other.

In the uncertain future that is fast approaching, we will need to have stronger communities, we’ll need to make more friends and we will need to stay closer to our families. The Ku‘oko‘a path will lead us there.