Earth Orbit

“We Have No Energy Strategy.”

Economist and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman outdid himself yesterday morning in his Times editorial Dumb as We Wanna Be. He criticizes presidential candidates McCain and Clinton for proposing a “vacation” from the federal excise tax (18.4 cents per gallon) on gasoline for the summer.

We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

This is just the latest blundering misstep in our (lack of) national energy policy. The reason we need a national energy policy is NOT because gasoline is approaching $4.00 a gallon (and it’s the summer driving season) — but because the United States pours out almost one-fourth of the total carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that enter the Earth’s atmosphere each year.

These greenhouse gas emissions are primarily due to the use of carbon-based fossil fuels — petroleum, coal and natural gas — and directly contribute to the problem of global warming. Friedman continues:

When Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December.

Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

The scientific consensus is that Earth’s climate is gradually warming and that this change is attributable to human activities — greenhouse gas emissions.

We can change this! — by making significant changes in how we run our economy, design our cars, build our buildings.

The United States should provide leadership in the global economy, showing that it is possible to provide growth and jobs without degrading the environment.

What should we be doing?

The United States has in the past mobilized its vast material and creative resources to accomplish many enormous projects: digging itself out of the Depression with back-to-work programs and social support programs; fighting and winning two World Wars; helping to rebuild Europe with the post-war Marshall Plan; putting a man on the moon and exploring the solar system. 

We need a coordinated National Energy Strategy, led from the White House and supported by the Congress — a peacetime Manhattan Project with two primary goals:

1. To greatly reduce the consumption of fossil fuels; and

2. To stimulate research and development of clean, renewable energy sources and delivery systems.

Milly, my 8-month-old granddaughter, deserves to grow up in a world that can sustainably provide ample energy and food and water for its inhabitants.

Everybody else on the planet deserves this too.

Nine years ago oil was at $10/barrel. Now it’s $118+. What gives?

Paul Krugman, economist and New York Times columnist, addressed this in his column on April 21. He went to the edge of fully acknowledging the resource crisis we face, then stepped back:

The global surge in commodity prices is reviving a question we haven’t heard much since the 1970s: Will limited supplies of natural resources pose an obstacle to future world economic growth?

How you answer this question depends largely on what you believe is driving the rise in resource prices. Broadly speaking, there are three competing views.

The first is that it’s mainly speculation — that investors, looking for high returns at a time of low interest rates, have piled into commodity futures, driving up prices. On this view, someday soon the bubble will burst and high resource prices will go the way of Pets.com.

The second view is that soaring resource prices do, in fact, have a basis in fundamentals — especially rapidly growing demand from newly meat-eating, car-driving Chinese — but that given time we’ll drill more wells, plant more acres, and increased supply will push prices right back down again.

The third view is that the era of cheap resources is over for good — that we’re running out of oil, running out of land to expand food production and generally running out of planet to exploit.

I find myself somewhere between the second and third views.

This is strong language for a mainstream economist. While he doesn’t go as far as I would like in acknowledging the finitude of the Earth’s resources and the absolute necessity for transitioning to a sustainable economy – I am somewhat heartened to hear this discussion in the Times.

This reminds me of the (appropriate) analogy of what it takes to turn a supertanker around in the middle of the ocean. It doesn’t turn on a dime, but takes MILES to execute a turn because of its huge bulk and great momentum.

That’s what we’re dealing with. As eager as many of us are for fundamental change – it isn’t going to happen overnight.

Patience is a virtue.

Read more about fossil fuels, renewable energy and creating a sustainable economy at SavingTheEarth.net – your resource for the best environmental books.

Two great books on the realities of fossil fuels and the need for renewable energy: