The U.S. energy policy is about the last thing I wanted to write about this month since I pretty much wrote off that our government would tend to it anytime soon. If you’ve lost track, the last major energy bill was passed 13 years ago.
As it turns out, our political leaders still haven’t tended to it, although they passed an energy bill which the President signed. Technically, it’s a bill; politically, it’s a bill of goods sold to the American public.
Like any political football this issue got kicked up and down the field numerous times. Both the Democrats and Republicans put forth rhetoric that would make you think that they were out to save ourselves from ourselves.
Take what Majority Leader Bill Frist said as an example: “We must take steps to reduce our dependence on foreign countries and thereby enhance our energy security at home.” Take a breath (editor’s note). “When we rely on other nations for more than half our oil supply, we simply put our security at risk.”
If you liked that one, check out what the President said concerning the need for this energy bill. “Our dependence on foreign oil is like a foreign tax on the American dream, and the tax is growing every year.”
Who’s going to argue with that? That’s damn good speech writing. But that’s what is said in front of the camera. It’s a different story when you get down to the stinky bowels of government. Case in point is the House-Senate conference committee. For context, realize that this country uses 20 million barrels of oil every day with the promise that it will continue to increase.
Amazingly, some people on this committee woke up with a conscience one morning and peddled a measure to ask the President to reduce oil consumption by one million barrels of oil a day by 2015. But that moment of sensibility was overcome with a wave of political practicality. In other words, the President wasn’t about to let this idea fly. But why? The administration didn’t think there would be affordable technology to meet higher fuel-efficiency standards. That’s only 10 years away, you know.
Without a strong policy, we basically leave it up to the car companies to sit around and dream up solutions. These are the same guys who brought us bigger and faster cars for no other reason than to build bigger and faster cars. According to Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey, auto fuel economy peaked at 26.5 miles per gallon in 1986. Nineteen years is a long time to be sitting on your best year when fuel consumption is going up and our means to get it are going down.
We have the technology –– from ethanol to hybrids –– to make changes right now. Of course we have made some progress, but not to the degree that needs to take place. This energy bill just doesn’t provide the car companies with the incentive to move more quickly in the direction to save fuel.
There are a few measures in the bill to slow the pace of usage, but they are mostly laughable. For example, the ethanol provision would save 0.8 percent by 2012. That’s like using a squirt gun on the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Perhaps we need to turn to the Brazilians for some insight on ethanol. According to Gal Luft, director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, Brazil has gone from importing almost 80 percent of its fuel supply in 1973 (the year of the Arab oil embargo) to “cutting its dependence by more than half.” What kind of magic do they have that we don’t have? Luft says that over the last three decades the Brazilians invested heavily in a sugar-based ethanol industry, which now accounts for about a third of their fuel for vehicle use. Basically, he says, they are energy independent. Not bad for a country that Americans either regard as backwards or as a vacation spot.
So what was this energy bill really about? To a large extent –– and I am being kind here –– this bill was about what the politicians could bring back to their home towns. We could call it “The Ridin’ High on the Hog Bill.” The pork barrel list is too long to report here or even in the entire page count of this issue, but the one news story about the new transportation bill, which is closely linked to the energy bill, is worth mentioning because it epitomizes what it means to bring home the bacon. It concerned a bridge to be built in Alaska. This particular one will be longer than the Golden Gate and would connect an 8,000-member community with a 50-member community. Apparently, the polar bears would rather walk across a channel than swim across it.
Like you, I’m a car business guy who wants to see people hit the open road and wear out parts so that our industry can replace them. I am convinced that we can sell just as many parts if we can move toward more fuel-efficient vehicles. In fact, people may even drive more if they get better mileage.
What will tomorrow bring? Today we import 58 percent of our oil. Federal officials project that by 2025, this number will jump to 68 percent. Even if we open up ANWR –– the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge –– we can only bring that percentage down to 64 percent. Although this bill doesn’t allow for drilling in ANWR, it’s a topic that isn’t going away anytime soon. It was purposely left off the table so that it could be dealt with at another time. I expect this issue to rear its ugly head again in the next six months. Time’s a tickin’ for this administration to get done what it has set out to do.
So here we are stuck with an energy bill that doesn’t lower prices at the pump and doesn’t wean us off foreign oil. Apparently, our elected officials will deal with this issue again when the next full-blown crisis hits...or in the next 13 years or so.
