Moronic Energy Bill Soon to Celebrate 4th Birthday

By Meteor Blades

A week from Monday marks the fourth anniversary of the introduction of the Cheney-Bush Energy Plan – the oligarchs’ plan, the OP for short.

Unfortunately, the reason the OP’s transformation into a document for Dubyanocchio’s signature hasn’t yet managed to secure a majority in the U.S. Senate has little to do with the inadequate wisdom displayed by the administration regarding America’s energy future. Rather, the obstacle comes from disagreement between the House and Senate on how to handle manufacturer liability for the toxic gasoline additive MTBE. If a compromise can be reached on MTBE, then Approved! will be stamped on wretched legislation that employs the same myopic approach the government has taken since Ronald Reagan slashed the best parts of Jimmy Carter’s energy program and left the worst intact.

As anybody who’s been engaged even peripherally in the discussion knows, finding blueprints for a decent national energy plan requires scarcely any exertion. The Natural Resources Defense Council has one, and so do the folks at the National Energy Policy Initiative, the Apollo Alliance and the Wilderness Society. The American Council for Energy Efficient Economy has put together a smart energy strategy that stresses using state as energy laboratories and some states are promising to do just that. The Danes and the Germans have good plans. Denmark proposes to have 79% of its electrical power supplied by renewable sources 25 years from now. And, although it isn’t exactly a plan, I’m still enamored of Steven Silberman’s 2001 piece in Wired - The Energy Web , one of the most far-sighted perspectives on redoing energy that I’ve read anywhere.

Over at Daily Kos, Jerome a Paris offers good ideas to insert into a sane energy policy practically every day. Devilstower is frequently on the case as well, including this sweet little takedown of the OP. Stirling Newberry presented a thought-provoking sustainability energy plan. (Centuries ago in Internet time - October 2003 - I did my own three-part deconstruction of the Cheney-Bush plan.)

The OP isn’t totally devoid of worthwhile approaches. But its overall impact ought to make it an easy thumbs-down for any future-oriented Congressperson. I don’t mean the future of gasoline prices next summer but rather the future when today’s 21-year-olds have kids in college.

Although “peak oil” probably grabs Tom DeLay the same way the ozone hole or global warming do – as junk science – anybody who pays even cursory attention knows that oil isn’t infinite. Oil men have long known this when it came to individual wells; after all, they invented oil-depletion tax deductions. As recently as five years ago, however, the conventional wisdom in the industry and its auxiliaries was that global peak oil was many decades, if not a century, away.

Now some people think global peak oil has already arrived, some think it’s just around the corner, some buy the optimists’ view that it won’t happen until 2030 or ’40. Some fear the consequences of what they believe will be an inevitable pinch, including wars that will make Iraq seem like an amusement park ride. Others think the arrival of peak oil won’t matter because the unhindered free market will generate new technology that will replace increasingly expensive oil and we’ll all be as happy as clams at high tide for generations to come. And still others think that the fallout will be massive and the survivors will be the better for it on an earth with one or two billion human inhabitants instead of the current six. They, of course, see themselves as survivors.

As is obvious from Diaries and their comments as well as the other sources linked above, when you get past critiquing the OP and into the details of what should comprise leftist, liberal or Democratic energy policies, we find ourselves of mixed minds. I’ve got my own pet notions for both the short term and the long term, and I’m supremely skeptical of anyone who presents [insert favorite technology or lifestyle change here] as the energy solution. In my view, it’s the mostly one-dimensional energy approach taken by our leaders over the past quarter-century that has put us on the brink of severe consequences. I’m leery of signing on to another one-technique-fits-all proposal, no matter how jazzy it may seem. Diversity seems to me crucial.

But all our talk about what a sane national energy policy should be is about as useful for the moment as trying to corral farts to run the power grid. Chances are, with a new Senate majority, we’re going lose this round in the debate. We’re going to be stuck with an energy monstrosity for three-and-a-half years. Just tag that on to the 25 years of lousy policy we’ve already endured. We can work on policy at the state and local levels, but there’s no chance that Dubyanocchio’s Washington will, for example, adopt one of my favored approaches – entirely and rapidly switching the federal fleets over to high-mileage vehicles (hybrids or others).

In no way do I wish to suggest that personal behavior is an adequate substitute for reasonable government policy. Some people will scrape grease off restaurant grills to fuel their cars, but most of us can’t. Subsidies that make it easier for fossil-fuel companies to continue the same-old, same-old make it tougher for people to become more earth-friendly. Not everybody lives in a dwelling where solar cells are an option.

Nonetheless, if the rest of the Second Term is – please let it be so – an interregnum before another Democrat steps into the White House, it’s worth looking into what we can do personally when it comes to consuming energy. And what we are doing. The connection between driving Hummers at home and driving Humvees elsewhere intersects with personal responsibility as well as government policy. I raised this issue in the broader environmental aspect on Earth Day in this essay, but I’d like to hear how readers handle their own energy consumption.

Lest anyone misconstrue me as preachy, let it be known that we’re not saints at our house. We added insulation and some double-paned glass when we moved in 14 years ago. We don’t have air conditioning, and we don’t plan on adding it. We don’t turn the furnace on until the temperature is 55 degrees – we wear sweaters until then. We’ve put compact fluorescent bulbs in as many fixtures as will accept them. (Thankfully, these have improved markedly in the past decade.) We ride public transportation when it will take us where we need to go on time. And we ride bikes for neighborhood shopping trips (not for commuting).

On the other hand, we don’t have solar cells or hot-water panels on our roof, we own two older Volvos that don’t get much better mileage than the smaller SUVs (we’ve vowed to go biodiesel or hybrid when we buy our next car) and, although our diet contains as much organic food as we can find, much of what we eat has been imported over long distances using fossil fuel or grown with water pumped expensively into regions not really suited for it.

What about you?

Comments

[DemFromCT]

We eat free range chicken and organic when possible, buy Japanese cars for the milage and performance (read: they don't wind up in the shop), use the flourescent bulbs and wear the sweaters. We don't have solar panels 'cause in CT you can use them 3 weeks a year.

We bike when we can, and live close to work so we don't have to burn up fuel to commute. In fact, stubborn NE folks won't go 5 minutes out of their way if they don't have to. None of this driving 40 minutes for milk (or mail) like in CA.

But winters are cold and one has to do what one has to do to stay warm.

[DHinMI]

Two comments, and then I'll share my meagre contributions to conservation.

First, on peak oil: I'm probably going to do a post next week on what we haven't heard about from Iraq, or what hasn't happened on issues not affected by the insurgency. One of the things I've read almost nothing about is the condition of the Iraqi oilfields, and any assessments of how much oil is actually there. About 16-18 months ago there was an article in the NYT about the horrible condition of the wells, which hadn't been pumped with water properly to keep the earth from collapsing into the openings from which the oil has been pumped, how the oil has been degraded and some of it lost to efficient extraction, etc. And the fact that the Saudis claim to be pumping at full capacity is a little scary.

The other comment is that when California had all the electricity problems a few years back, didn't state gov't end up cutting way back on energy usuage through some fairly simply measures, like turning off all office lights and office machines every night instead of leaving them running? IIRC, the reduction in energy usage was quite remarkable.

Now, I live in the Detroit area, where back in the 1930's or 1949's, General Motors bought up the streetcars and took them off line (so people would be forced to drive or ride busses). Public transportation in Michigan (other than the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area) is a complete joke. So since I have to drive everywhere, I drive a Saturn; it's union-made in the U.S., has a very light fiberglass body, and gets great gas milage (+35 on the highway). I attempt to buy groceries that aren't highly processed, and are seasonal in this area as opposed to something imported from across the globe. In various places I've lived I seal the windows in the winter, keep the blinds closed when it's hot, use the timer on the air conditioner so it turns off in the early morning hours, and I don't try to shake the voices of my grandparents, who grew up without electricity and lived through the Depression, telling me to "shut off the damn lights." During the winter, I wear sweaters in the house. When I buy a house, I'll try to ensure it's well insulated, and will do some simple things like rake leaves into bags and line parts of the base of the house with those bags (which cuts down on drafts and made my parent's basement noticable warmer and more efficient). And if it's not shaded to the late afternoon sunlight, I'll probably plant a maple of something that will shade the house from sunlight during the hottest part of the day (usually around 5-6 PM).

[Meteor Blades]

California DID conserve massively during the "energy crisis" without a major publicity push.

What's really scary about oil reserves - in Iraq and elsewhere - is that almost everybody has inflated estimates of what they have.

[BoulderDuck]

89 Civic. Gets about 40 mpg highway! Woo-hoo. I will need to modernize soon, but 35 mpg will be the lowest milage of my next car. But that one will have airbags, and maybe a little more between me and the folks in the Escalades going 88 on the 110.

Um, I know most of you have heard this a lot, but for those who have missed it: next time you gas up, check your tire pressure!!! Underinflated = Bad Milage + Unsafe. Next time, not the time after that.

Those of us without kids have some luxuries in these departments. For instance, I can live close enough to work to walk or bike in.

Nevertheless, I gotta say that I am continuously floored by how sucky it is to bike in S. California.

One other thing - I pay Pasadena Water & Power an extra $3 a month or so to subsidize wind power. Wind is not any magic bullet, but I think it makes a lot of sense.

[Brother Artemis]

As someone who sailed through the 60's as a hippy, I can assure everyone that it is possible to have twice as much fun with half as much energy. I think those who see the future as preserving our energy profligate ways, are doomed to a neo-con view, i.e., secure what we can of the world's resources, and damn everybody else.

Our new, as yet unresolved, future energy paradigm might indeed ramp up enough to power a heavily energy dependent culture, but until then we may need to think of cutting our energy use, conserving wasted energy and learning to do with less energy. Keeping on the present course with either 2000 fossil fuel power plants or 2000 nuclear power plants just propels us along the road to our own destruction. (cf., Jared Diamond)

[verplanck colvin]

We should also not turn up our noses at the small scale energy production that is starting to creep up in our neighborhoods. In the adirondack mtns. in NY, there is a small wind farm being proposed near a ski area. The opponents are complaining about visual impacts (the dumbest reason to oppose its development, IMO) and the "miniscule" amount of power it produced. Our energy future will most likely rely on lots of small scale productions (small solar/wind farms).

As said in that earth day thread: VW golf, running on biodiesel, 45 mpg average. It's a beauty of a vehicle. And biodiesel is another small-scale technology that can take a big chunk out of our dependence on fossil fuels.

[spartan 68]

MB, check out this great story on Bush Energy Policy...

Changing all the rules

[spartan 68]

MB, check out this great story on Bush Energy Policy...

Changing all the rules

[Pan Yarosh]

You measure your own windows and fit your own blinds. Buy blinds on-line in minutes. They make and deliver your blinds in five working days. Browse their range and get a quote. Here