Of Oil and Hot Air

On Wednesday, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton will chair a conference of people who want to milk more electricity from the wind, rivers, sun and Earth’s own inner furnace. She hopes her renewable energy summit will demonstrate the Bush administration’s commitment to “promoting conservation and diversifying our energy supply.”

Dollars, however, speak louder than media events, and of the $34 billion in tax breaks in the House energy bill that the Bush administration is backing, just $7 billion is earmarked for energy efficiency programs and for the solar, wind and geothermal industries. The remaining $27 billion would be handed over, no strings attached, to the usual objects of government largess: the coal, oil, gas and nuclear power industries.

If Norton and other administration officials are serious about energy efficiency, they should back a bill now being crafted by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to raise fuel efficiency standards on sport-utility vehicles and use tax breaks to encourage the development and sales of “green” technologies such as hybrid cars, geothermal power and energy-efficient air conditioners. In addition, Daschle should be encouraged to adopt a reform long championed by Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) that would require that 20% of utility-generated power come from renewable resources by 2020.

The talk about the need to “diversify” the nation’s energy sources notwithstanding, the administration’s actual energy strategy still focuses on prodding Congress to approve fat tax breaks for big oil and to let drillers punch holes in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Norton, playing to today’s fears about national security, argues that lifting restrictions on oil drilling at the refuge would protect the nation in case anti-American sentiment one day prompts Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern countries to turn off the oil spigots. But the entire United States, from the Alaskan wilderness to the petroleum fields off the Florida coast, contains only 3% of the world’s oil reserves. Meanwhile, Americans consume a quarter of the oil produced worldwide.

The perplexing truth is that this nation now imports 60% of its oil, up from 36% back in 1973, when frustrated drivers snaked along in mile-long lines to get gasoline as an Arab oil embargo threatened to bring the United States to a standstill.

What’s really needed is a national energy policy that goes beyond increasing the supply of fossil fuels and tries to reduce the demand for them as well. At the very least, the Bush administration should impose surcharges on Americans who insist on buying gas hogs, including SUVs, which on average burn a gallon of gasoline every 17 miles. And rather than simply forking over unfettered tax breaks to Detroit auto makers (General Motors alone would get $800 million under the House’s “economic stimulus” package), the administration should reward only auto makers that accelerate development of the sort of hybrid cars that Toyota and Honda have been selling briskly for years.

Vice President Dick Cheney has condescendingly opined that while conservation “may be a sign of personal virtue ... it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” Daschle, on the other hand, realizes that conservation’s virtue stems from the fact that it is an economic, strategic and environmental necessity.