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Don’t get me wrong: I like Daylight Savings Time as much as the next
guy. Long, wistful evenings. Slow, fusion twilights. Fireflies.
But
by extending daylight hours as a way to save energy, from the second
Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, Congress has delivered
us the perfect metaphor for the “comprehensive, bipartisan” energy
legislation sent to President Bush last week: turning back the clock.
As
petroleum leaves the $60 per barrel benchmark behind; as our dependence
on foreign—and especially Middle Eastern—oil grows unabated; as our
soldiers continue to fight and die to protect our access to petroleum
in Iraq and the Near East; as the climate warms into the danger zone
for the natural systems life depends upon, our elected representatives
have sought recourse in the energy policies of the 1950s, 60s and
70s—precisely those policies that brought us to this wasteful,
profligate and irresponsibly sorry state in the first place.
Here are some, but by no means all, of the backward-looking measures contained in the massive legislation:
-
Subsidies for oil drilling.
- Subsidies for coal.
- An inventory of coastline oil resources, a first step in reopening
the long-settled issue of whether to sacrifice or endanger mature real
estate, tourism, insurance and fishing industries to open up offshore
California and the East Coast to oil development.
- Cradle-to-grave subsidies for nuclear power, in a bold handover of
taxpayers’ money to an industry that has proven itself incapable, for
half a century, of producing economic, safe electric power on its own.
And
here are some, but not all, of the progressive measures either ditched
by Congress, as the House and Senate coordinated their versions of the
energy bill, or simply never figured in:
-
Demand management, potentially the biggest bang for the energy buck and the kindest policy for the human environment.
- Stricter fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and trucks.
- Creation of a global carbon market, based on the Kyoto Treaty’s
emissions trading scheme, which would provide a start to what must
eventually become a united effort by all nations, industrialized and
developing, to slow and finally stop greenhouse gas emissions.
- A renewable energy standard for wind-to-electric, solar power,
co-generation, smallscale hydropower, etc., which would help investors
and markets to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels without spending a
red cent of taxpayers’ taxes.
- A commitment in law and regulations to distributive generation, or
micropower, which does not require large grid investments and has the
potential to create major jobs growth.
- Any hint of smart growth, directing development in an
energy-efficient direction by expanding rapid mass transit and focusing
economic growth around transit hubs.
- Any statement whatsoever concerning explicit goals of 1) reducing gas
prices in the short, middle or long term; and 2) reducing reliance on
foreign oil, now at 60 percent of U.S. consumption and probably going
higher as demand for inefficient vehicles and electric power grows.
- A serious policy to make our buildings and appliances energy efficient.
Behind
these individual measures stands the fossilized mindset of the
petroleum culture. It is the inflexible thinking of black and white,
winners and losers, profits and losses, us vs. them, power and
weakness, ego against collaboration. In other words, the best energy
policy the oil-coal-nuclear-electric power-car industries could buy.
Mostly, it is the antideluvian and obsessive idea that only compulsive
growth, technology and the corporate profits they render can guide us
in making public policy.
The post-World War II notion that we
can develop our way out of any predicament, from dirty coal plants
spoiling the earth’s atmosphere to highway congestion, has gained new
circulation. Only now, the Congress has taken the additional giant step
backward of denying all the scientific knowledge developed over a
generation that points toward the conclusion that the current energy
system can neither last much longer nor be changed quickly. The message
that we should not trust climate science and geology, to name the prime
example, but trust Texas Republican Rep. Joe “It’s a darn good bill”
Barton, takes us back not just to faith-based policies, but to Medieval
church dogma. And Mr. Bush, whose political allegiances to the fossil
fuel-driven industries are not about to change at the dusk of his
career, has been going around in the past month mindlessly repeating
his new and bogus energy mantra: new technology, new technology, new
technology.
If you Google the hundreds of American news reports
on the energy legislation, you will see why the Bush administration and
the Republican majority in Congress are able to foist such grotesque
oversimplifications on the public. While dutifully reporting the $14.5
billion in corporate welfare in the package, the media, almost
universally, adopted the language of “new technology” and “clean coal
technology,” without bothering to ask what that means, or if it means
anything tangible at all. (TEI will ask—try to find out, and report
back anon.)
The energy legislation shows that the president and
both houses of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have yet to accept
the idea that there is an urgent, or any, time element in the twin
issues of oil supplies and climate change. Rather, they have invited
American industry and finance, as well as the American media and
public, to join together in the fantasy that everything will be
okey-dokey if we just drill and mine every nook and cranny in the
world. That we can buy our way out of global warming with new product
development and happy news. That we’ve got all the time in the world.
An invitation to America to step back in time and leave everything to Beaver.
In
the face of such senility, those in the public and private sectors, and
the press, who understand the high stakes riding on energy issues for
world peace, security and sustainable development must not despair.
Rather, the job to transform the world’s energy system moves now to the
cities, states and regions. It will continue and evolve with strategic
partnerships, global alliances, protean markets, new thinking and, yes,
scientific and technical breakthroughs. Everyone may join
in—progressive companies with ideas and knowledge to sell and activist
shareholders; technical academies and institutes; civic societies and
non-governmental players.
With or without another hour of daylight, the American people will find our way toward energy independence.
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