Energy policy: Rethinking the Axis of Oil
Can America ever kick the oil habit? Not if Congress and George Bush have their way, but the ground is shifting
[Is] Congress rushing to embrace innovative ideas to kick the oil habit? Certainly not. In fact, the House of Representatives has just done the opposite by passing an energy bill stuffed full of subsidies for the oil-and-gas business. It includes giveaways for ethanol (a pretty ungreen petrol additive popular with corn farmers) and cheap catastrophic insurance for the nuclear industry. Meanwhile, it does nothing to close a loophole that allows sports-utility vehicles and Hummers to escape fuel-economy standards.
This bill is similar to last year's failed energy bill, which itself was based on the recommendations of the Cheney energy task force of 2001. But the House managed to add so much more pork--including a $2 billion giveaway to oil companies for deep-water research--to the bill that even the White House now criticises it as excessively costly. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, estimates that the full cost could be more than $90 billion.
Mr Bush's idea of reform may be a little more sophisticated than Congress's, but not much.
The article also describes the increasingly testy relationship between Bush's White House andthe Saudis, and writes approvingly of the new emerging coalition between traditional greens and "geo-greens" (yes, sadly, they borrow language from Tom Friedman), the more right wing analysts worried about energy dependence and/or excessive subsidies to the energy industry.
James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, envisions a geo-green coalition of "tree-huggers, do-gooders, sod busters and cheap hawks" pushing for energy independence. The oddest couple of all--Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute and Dan Becker of the deeply verdant Sierra Club--have just issued a joint call for a radically different energy policy: a market-based, "zero subsidy" energy bill. If such coalitions really spring forth, then American energy policy, and the Axis of Oil [between the USa and Saudi Arabia], would be turned on its ear.
That the Economist writes positively of such phenomena is in itself positive; this could be a wedge issue against big corporates and Republican pork that should be pursued.
To sum up on the three diaries, it would be fair to say that despite their rosy views on reserves and oil production, the Economist acknowledges that energy is a vital issue and that the current status quo on oil is unsustainable: Western majors are running out of oil and, even if there is enough as they claim in the Persian Gulf countries, it is going to present major geopolitical and economical problems to bring all the oil currently burnt in the US to the consumers.
As high gasoline prices bite, Bushco should be fully blamed for that, both in tactical terms for not doing anything about prices, and on strategic terms for not doing anything about the long term dependency of the US on a few unstable and/or unfriendly countries.
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