Energy Independence

Yesterday, this posting was begun in anger, and I’m glad that I didn’t place it before you without sleeping on it.

In listening to President Bush and Republican presidents since Richard Nixon you could easily surmise that America doesn’t have a real energy crisis and that all we have to do is apply the principals of supply side economics to our fuel needs. We can simply produce our way to energy independence. Oh, sure, we might have to make some minor adjustments at the fringes but nothing really hurtful to our life style.

For openers, presidents of both parties from Nixon to the incumbent pooh-pooh naysayers and pessimists who they charge with being wrong on energy and all other spheres and have no future in America. Looking back at the darkest moments in living memory, politicos remember the ostrich approach championed by presidents from Harding to Hoover whose `chicken in every pot’ held sway until the whole house nearly collapsed. The Democrats had no chance until Franklin Roosevelt came forward and promised to do something – anything. Damned if he didn’t, and the right has been railing about the high taxes on the rich ever since.

Democrats, on the other hand, have led on the energy crunch using the Chicken Little approach of pointing out that the sky is falling. Jimmy Carter lost his bid for re-election almost as much for his views on energy and the negativity permeating America as for his appearance of helplessness in the face of Iran’s kidnapping of the American Embassy personnel in Tehran. In government things sometimes have to get worse before they get better. Clearly Carter was too far out in front of his countrymen on energy. Democrats have sought conservation through regulation, and they ought to look at their position in the electoral process before reaffirming their usual direction.

Since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, it’s been government by musical chairs in dealing with the long term crises. Presidents and Congress approach the energy crisis as they did hurricanes: develop disaster plans, file reports, issue press releases, create agencies, and hope the damn thing holds off until they’re in Hawaii happily collecting their annuities. Sadly, along came Katrina and, like Hoover, the incumbent – Bush – had no one but Brownie to blame.

Similarly, Bush was the odd man out on gasoline prices. Being an expert on deflection, he had to turn the fan on the Saudis, Chinese, and even his pals in big oil when the excrement started to fly. Instead of recognizing that it might actually be time to level with the public and begin an adult approach to energy a full generation after Carter tried, Bush opened the classic Republican playbook and offered us supply side energy policy.

Energy is much like Katrina: pols make plans for energy independence, fund lots of pork on alternative sources, pay for some exotic R&D, give tax breaks for technologies that might be viable in twenty years and pray that their pensions kick in before reality of the situation becomes obvious. Oh, and most important, they make fun of serious scientists and intellectually bent members of their own class who say we’re in trouble. Cassandras like Al Gore, James Hansen, and lots of environmentalists are negativists who see nothing but bad things. Ronald Reagan wiped the floor with Jimmy Carter by pointing out that America remains the city on the hill with no need for gloom and doom. America is the land of opportunity, and we’ll be damned if we’ll change our ways in the face of temporary bad news.

Hovering, however, is that a major goal of al Qaeda is to kick us – America and our Western allies - out of Muslim lands and to overthrow the governments of some of the richest oil states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and now Iraq which are perceived to be propped up by us simply to get at their oil without so much as a by your leave for the poor citizens. For sixty years we’ve built our society on cheap oil, and we’ve approached the Middle East commodity owners with the single minded idea of keeping the supply flowing. We’ve ridden this tiger for so long we don’t have a clue on how to dismount and neither political party has uttered a word on how to deal with this problem. Don’t expect one before November.

Every Republican policy statement is based on supply. We’ll increase the use of ethanol, drill offshore on the continental shelf, open up the Arctic wildlife refuge, build more nuclear plants, fund clean coal technologies, encourage alternate forms of energy such as wind and solar; the list goes on and on. Frankly, some of these approaches do make sense given the pains we’re beginning to suffer and that will increase exponentially in the years ahead. But we can’t just go cold turkey on Middle Eastern oil. We will have to increase supply and disappoint some liberals, but we’re going to have to come to grips with a future with expensive – very expensive - energy.

But today’s approach is all happiness and there will be little pain in the future. There will be no increase in the federal gasoline tax. Conservation will be mandated by the market, but that is mentioned only in passing, if at all. But the market will weigh most heavily on the poor and middle classes. Filling up Jaguars or BMWs at $5.00 a gallon will never be a problem for the well to do but that price will drown the exurban poor driving ten year old Chevys thirty miles to low wage jobs.

We’ve built the society on cheap energy: huge houses, gas guzzling SUVs, and roads to the horizon. The cars will be dealt with over a decade or so as we trade for smaller more efficient vehicles, but the last to get the appropriate vehicles will be those most in need. The McMansions will be with us for several generations and as their values go down the nature of their residents will change. Oil and gas will continue to be the energy sources of need, if not choice.

How are we to deal with these painful adjustments? The supply siders are wrong, and the liberals are too draconian, and we must find a middle way. We must do what is reasonable to ease the economy and our people through what is bound to be a very agonizing process of conservation. We’ve got to be realistic on domestic oil. Can we pass up the chance to provide up to six percent of the daily petroleum needs of the country at a price that is likely to dampen the world cost and be developed with very reasonable safety risks by passing up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge? Many say yes; I say no – we must proceed. The same goes for the continental shelf. It’s easy for environmentalists to say no, but they condemn the poor and middle classes to ever greater pain in the market.

On the other hand, no matter how much bunkum is spread about clean coal, it’s filthy stuff. Even the low sulfur coal of the Powder River basin will spew thousands of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. New nuclear plants will almost certainly have to be built to provide the electric power for our ever more conservation conscious society.

The article that prompted this gusher of words about oil was in yesterday’s Washington Post. Two energy scientists exploded the myth of ethanol. Sad to say, all of the alternatives to oil have plenty of minuses. I’m linking the op-ed article. It makes all the sense in the world and destroys the dreams of farmers and politicians for a painless yet profitable transition from Middle Eastern oil.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001480.html?referrer=emailarticle

None of this makes for joyful reading, but we are in the beginning stages of our recovery from the addiction to oil. As we move into the new era, the withdrawal symptoms will lessen, so don’t fret. Remember, even if we can’t make cost effective energy from crops, beer, wine and spirits come from our green friends, and it’s four o’clock somewhere.

Blog on!

Wild Bill