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| Home Front: Politix |
| Energy Independence? |
| 2007-01-26 |
| By Charles Krauthammer Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem. The result? In 1973 we imported 34.8 percent of our oil. Today we import 60.3 percent. And what does this president propose? Another great technological fix. For Jimmy Carter, it was the magic of synfuels. For George Bush, it's the wonders of ethanol. Our fuel will grow on trees. Well, stalks, with even fancier higher-tech variants to come from cellulose and other (literal) rubbish. It is very American to believe that chemists are going to discover the cure for geopolitical weakness. It is even more American to imagine that it can be done painlessly. Ethanol for everyone. Farmers get a huge cash crop. Consumers get more supply. And the country ends up more secure. This is nonsense. As my colleague Robert Samuelson demonstrates, biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it. Even worse, the happy talk displaces any discussion about here-and-now measures that would have a rapid and revolutionary effect on oil consumption and dependence. No one talks about them because they have unhidden costs. Politicians hate unhidden costs. There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear. First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation -- fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of "renewable and alternative fuels in 2017'' and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies -- of the kind we have been trying for three decades. Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 -- with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury -- and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings. No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It's the essence of capitalism. Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference. We will always need some oil. And the more of it that is ours, the better. It is tautological that nothing more directly reduces dependence on foreign oil than substituting domestic for foreign production. Yet ANWR is now so politically dead that the president did not even mention it in the State of the Union, or his energy address the next day. He did bring up, to enthusiastic congressional applause, global warming. No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear. What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere. Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated -- very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn't pollute the atmosphere. At all. There is no free lunch. Producing energy is going to produce waste. You pick your poison and you find a way to manage it. Want to do something about global warming? How many global warming activists are willing to say the word nuclear? So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #10 Now, Verlaine's #8 comment was a serious one. I don't agree that the dependence of the US on imported oil is "much ado about nothing." I don't agree that there is a "real market" in the oil import/export business: the pricing is driven by monopoly forces of government & corporations, the entire Rantburg community has no say in the pricing one way or the other, unless an Exxon CEO or a Saudi prince contribute regularly here. Part of the world oil price is the 4 GI's murdered in Karbala this week, and this never seems to enter the pricing discussion. I do agree there is not the remotest chance of driving down the cost of oil. However, we can de-fund the Iranian mullahs rather easily by shutting down their oil import/export facilities with a brief bombing campaign which they more than a little deserve since 1979. In any case, no level of funding will help dead mullahs. I think Verlaine presupposes that if rule of law & a barely humane order somehow break out in the Muslim oil fields and the jihadis somehow lose their ability to threaten the rest of the world, all will be well with the oil import business. This really needs some serious discussion. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-01-26 23:22 |
| #9 The U.S's capability for energy independence is the same as the Amish community's capability for the same. Live an Amish lifestyle & have a great degree of energy independence. I agree with CK. The US (and the Rantburg commenters) are not at all serious about energy independence. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-01-26 21:53 |
| #8 This "energy independence" thing is a stunningly widespread much-ado-about-nothing. First, there is no "problem". At least none that can be materially affected by any of the measures mentioned by CK or folks here. Petroleum is a key commodity for all modern economies, for energy and other uses, and nothing will change that - not taxing gasoline, not more driling in ANWR, whatever. Achieving "energy independence" would achieve exactly what? Would we REALLY then just sit by watching football and make jokes about some chaos in the MidEast that had the effect of empowering jihadis and giving them the keys to hundreds of billions in revenue? Of course not. No economically, technically, or politically feasible or DESIRABLE set of moves will materially affect the global use of petroleum. The economic cost of artificially replacing petroleum (i.e., replacing it based on policy and not real market price signals) would be crippling, and is unthinkable. Besides which, if the US were to pursue this imaginary course, no one else would (think of the Kyoto-related greenhouse gas silliness, and how any "compliance" by the US would be more than compensated for by non-compliant growth in Asia). There's not the remotest chance of driving the price of petroleum down significantly, in a sustained manner. So we can't "de-fund" the mullahs. Recall that Tom Friedman is in love with this concept - a reminder that it is in fact likely to be utterly infeasible. There's also not the slightest chance we could reduce our petroleum use enough to make us indifferent to the global oil economy. But just for the sake of clarification, assume there were. Economically, we're still tied to the global economy (duh - globalization, which benefits all and that includes us), and unlikely to sit by while it is driven into the ground by chaos in the oil sector. Strategically, we're absolutely unable to sit by and let the oil revenues be used for WMD development, terrorism, etc. - recall that THIS is the reason we're in Iraq to begin with. Shame on me for my laziness in not assembling the data and doing the rigorous quantitative and literary economic exposition to debunk this "energy independence" concept. It's a head-shaker that it's been in dozens of SOTUs. It's simply a non-starter - based on an economically and strategically incorrect analysis of the situation, and not logically thought through. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2007-01-26 21:50 |
| #7 The way I see it there are two issues here: Short term, long term. Short term there are somethings we can do. Ethanol/Methenol mixed into gas to cut down in the gasoline percentage used by sporty cars. Biodiesel mixed into diesel to cut down on the diesel percentage used by slow ponderous vehicles. Laws that promote SUVs and trucks and other vehicles to shift over to diesel. We can adjust the amount of booze/biodiesel content as we go. Oh, and increase drilling. Long term. Nuke plants. Don't wait for fourth generation plants that can create hydrogen, start plopping out third generation pebble-bed nuclear plants now. Hydrogen's a joke, we will see batteries and plug-in hybrids long before hydrogen and we'll need lots of power. Both long and short term should have been proposed on Sept 12 as requirements for our long term security. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-01-26 13:47 |
| #6 One mistake I made on the ethanol question was to look at it in a static sense. Back in the 80s and 90s, corn was the only source (at least in the USA) of ethanol and the process by which it was extracted was pretty inefficient requiring huge amounts of natural gas. I used to declaim the idiocy of this process and of the subsidy. However, the world changes. The ethanol process has become far more efficient and, far more importantly, there is reason to expect that sources other than corn can be used to provide the base material (even sewage sludge and waste from chicken/pig/cattle ops). Assuming this works out, the 'waste of the taxpayers money' will have evolved into a carbon negative, job producing industry in the next 20 years. OK, it won't solve the energy problem. But CK's solutions aren't politically feasible ($4/gal tax on gas, yeah right). |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-01-26 13:32 |
| #5 Charles Krauthammer, "Politicians hate unhidden costs". ! |
| Posted by: RD 2007-01-26 11:50 |
| #4 There are two ways to look at energy in the future: More energy, more energy use, greater efficiency, less and cleaner waste, and improved standard of living around the world. Or, Less energy, forced conservation, stalled technology, expensive waste disposal, and a slowly diminishing standard of living around the world. In past, the former example has always proven true, but doomsayers ALWAYS say that the latter example is the unavoidable future. They said it in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and continue to say it today. So whenever the subject is mentioned, it should ALWAYS be remembered that the doomsayers are ALWAYS wrong. They are batting a thousand. Whatever they say, the opposite will happen. They are impervious to facts, logic and reason. Anyone who takes their advice is a fool. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-01-26 10:54 |
| #3 There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear. He left out the most obvious thing we can do: Conquer the oil-fields of western "Iran" and northern "Saudi" Arabia. Instant energy independence combined with the impoverishment of our worst enemies while holding the tether on the ChiComs. It is more than a twofer; it's the obvious solution to our problems. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-01-26 10:45 |
| #2 The US does have the capability for energy independence - but it would come with a cost, and not just for the US. For the sake of the argument assume gasahol as the 'answer' - to plant enough cropland for that purpose would eliminate all surplus and export agricultural capacity. Maybe China then gets cheaper oil from KSA, but where do they get replacement soybeans? They'll pay more, and eventually the poorer consumers with little of value to trade will starve. Think 'North Korea', but without nukes and missiles. In the long run, I'd rather have the agricultural land and fresh water supply than all the oil in the Middle East. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-01-26 10:26 |
| #1 Yeah Charles, while you're at it, point out that thousands die every year from 'safe clean' solar energy. Little things they seem to forget like skin cancer and heat prostration. The Sun, the largest continuous thermonuclear reaction in the neighborhood. Caution, overexposure can cause death. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-01-26 09:23 |