Wisdom, insight, energy

The administration of President George W. Bush has done an admirable job of punishing those whom we suspect of perpetrating the Sept. 11 tragedy, and the president deserves his high public opinion ratings on that account. As the President returns to his domestic agenda, however, he will be on less sure footing, and in the finest of American traditions he can expect constructive opposition.

As he champions his energy policy it is clear that as the “energy president” he has a fatally biased and narrow vision. His father, President George H. W. Bush, was an oilman in his time. George, Sr. started as an oilfield supply salesman and eventually founded or co-founded three oil companies: Bush-Overby Oil Development, Zapata Petroleum, and Zapata Off-Shore. Likewise, George, Jr. has oil industry experience. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1973 he began business researching mineral rights for larger oil companies. He founded the appropriately, if ill named, Arbusto Energy, which before it could go bust changed its name and was merged into another oil company, Spectrum 7. Two years later, Harken Energy bought Spectrum 7, and George, Jr. was out of the oil business before he could do any serious harm.

One biography attributes his lack of success in oil to the falling prices of the times, which raises questions about our president’s strategic vision regarding the oil industry. The time to get into oil is when prices were rising, not falling. But George, Jr., one step behind the times, went for it anyway. He does not understand the word “energy” the way most of us do; when he says “energy” he really means “oil”. It has been reported on CNN that Enron, the Texas energy company (“Houston, we have a problem…”) was consulted with the Bush administration at least six times in the formulation of the President’s “energy” policy. George W. Bush has correctly identified energy resources as an issue of importance, but his judgment on energy strategy is at best suspect, particularly when it comes to oil.

In his 1996 article “What is Strategy?” in the Harvard Business Review Michael E. Porter, head of the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, addresses the issue of defining what business one is in. He describes how the great American railroad barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries defined themselves as being in the railroad industry when they should have defined themselves as being in the transportation industry. Companies that adopted the automobile, specifically its cargo-carrying cousin the truck, eventually left the great railroad companies eating dust instead of transportation business. They could not compete because they were in yesterday’s game, not tomorrow’s.

The United States is facing and will continue to face increasing competition for the world’s scarce resources. As world population levels rise, so will resource consumption rates. As more and more countries model the United States and adopt democracy and the free market economic system, they will model our phenomenal consumption rates.

Since World War II the United States has been the economic engine of the world. Insulated by oceans and a vast continent, blessed with a political and economic system that unleashes creativity, our industrial capacity hummed when the other industrial powers of the world lay in the smoking ruins of Europe. But Europe is no longer smoking ruins. Europe is no longer divided against itself. A young “United States of Europe” is late in its third trimester, and it will have the economic and political power to compete with the United States of America. And then there is the monolith of the east, China. As China liberalizes its economy and integrates it with that of the world, it too will become an increasing formidable economic competitor of the United States. And those are just the larger competitors. They too will all want energy. They too will all want oil. But oil is neither renewable nor sustainable in the long run.

Resource exploitation is yesterday’s game. Conservation is today’s game, and sustainable energy sources is tomorrow’s. The Bush energy plan relies far too heavily on exploitation of non-renewable energy sources at the expense of not just irreplaceable ecological jewels, not just at the expense of conservation and sustainability, but also at the expense of the United States’ ability to compete in tomorrow’s world economy. Other countries, notably Europe, are leading the way in renewable energy development and they will gain a competitive advantage.

George W. Bush is nothing if not his daddy’s boy. George Sr. graduated from Phillips Academy in 1942, George Jr. in 1964. George Sr. graduated from Yale in 1948, George Jr. in 1968. George Sr. was a Navy pilot in World War II, George Jr. was a National Guard pilot in the late ’60s. George Sr. worked in the oil industry, and so did George Jr. George Sr. was the 41st president of the United States, George Jr. is the 43rd. But “Poppy” Bush cannot set the example for his son in the 21st century, and the 21st century will present some distinctly pressing challenges for humankind, never mind the President of the United States.

The United States will need a leader with the insight and vision to formulate good strategy and good policy, policy that amounts to more than simplistic pronouncements on “evil” and legislation being passed “over my dead body,” and strategy that keeps the United States economically competitive.

John Henderson is a social studies teacher at Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft.