ENERGY POLICY OF THE PAST

For what it’s worth as Congress reconciles House and Senate energy bills, consider the following:

“The National Energy Strategy recently announced by President Bush fails to meet the needs of the American people. … Instead, the president proposes a policy from the past: increased oil production and more nuclear power plants. Reasonable development of our resources must be part of our policy. But it cannot be the entire policy, as the president proposes. There must also be conservation, energy efficiency and development of alternative fuels.”

Another complaint from a Democratic Senate? In fact, it is, but it is more than that. It is the opening paragraph of a speech given by Sen. George Mitchell on Feb. 22, 1991, pointing out, none too gently, that the energy policies of the 41st president were shortsighted and industry-driven. That was in a time of a Republican president and Democratic Congress. Since then, with a Democratic president and, first a Democratic then a Republican Congress, then a Republican president in which the parties split the Congress, so little progress has been made on a long-term energy strategy it is safe to conclude that, short of prolonged crisis, the two major parties have surrendered on the issue.

The problem is difficult, for one thing. An industry might be encouraged through tax breaks to make something – air conditioners, cars, electricity – more efficiently, but that doesn’t produce conservation; it produces increased production. Because energy is integral to the most basic living requirements, including food and shelter, any proposed change brings out large numbers of lobbyists, who warn of tremendous risks, some of them actually real. Federal subsidies for alternative sources of fuel are different in kind that those subsidies granted almost automatically to fossil-fuel producers. If requiring people to give up things was unpopular in 1991, in the time of McMansions and huge SU/pickups, it is unthinkable.

In the last presidential race Ralph Nader irritated both major parties by saying there was no major difference between them. On several specific environmental issues – drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, policy for roadless areas, review of expansions for older power plants – he was wrong. But on the broad issue of energy, he was close enough to be right. And with so many costs of a failed energy strategy hidden from the public, there is no incentive for the parties to distinguish their positions in any meaningful way.

Democrats want those Green votes back; Republicans want to show they aren’t energy demons they are said by opponents to be. They can both win by encouraging investment in improving alternative, renewable energy. Clearly, the ability to extract energy from the sun, wind and waves has not yet advanced enough technologically to make a significant difference to the nation’s total energy mix. But just as certainly, it never will unless more research is done on these potential sources of power.

Either that or it is more “policy from the past” for at least another decade.