Energy Crisis

When Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid announced that the energy bill passed last year - that's right, last year - by the House wouldn't be put up for a vote before August, and likely not for the rest of the year in the face of Republican opposition, it signaled a blow to Democratic hopes of stemming their losses in the midterm congressional elections in November. Why should liberals break their necks trying to get out the vote for Democrats if a clean energy bill has no better chance of becoming law in a Democratic Congress than in a Republican Congress? But the most disastrous result this surrender is the fact that, after 37 years, America still has no coherent energy policy and still has no commitment to lessening our dependence on foreign energy sources, particularly oil.

The Republicans are actually on the winning side of this issue. You can show people all the pictures of oil-coated brown pelicans from Louisiana there are, and you can have interminable Northeast heat waves like the one we have right now last all the way into October, but Americans are likely unwilling to pay a little more for electricity generated by wind and solar power and use less of it, at least in the short term, for long term gain. Coal is dirty and messy, and extracting it has become even more dangerous and environmentally unfriendly these days, but if it produces more cheap electricity, hey, what's so bad about that? Also, despite corporate average fuel economy standards that have already been placed on the auto industry, the abundance of oil - including any domestic oil we produce, which gets sold on the international market rather than reduce our dependence on the Middle East - will mean that many Americans will continue to buy large SUVs. Subsidized gasoline is as American as apple pie, and probably cheaper. Electric cars like the Chevrolet Volt are going to be expensive - again, in the short term - and the government hasn't given General Motors enough incentives to enable them to produce the car for less money and pass the savings on to the consumer. The bottom line is that Americans can't think long term. They never could. Only now, with the planet's ecosystem sagging under the weight of human activity, that's become more apparent.

The benefits of clean energy - and the possibly reduced use of energy that would allow us to be less dependent on technology and lead less stressful and more productive lives - don't register with a culture used to being forever plugged in at a cheap price. I'm guilty of that too. I've been on a personal computer typing this out, haven't I? I use a good deal of electricity, possibly generated by a coal-fired power station, writing on this blog. But I'm willing to adapt to the changes that a clean energy law would demand, if only it could pass. Besides, any conversion to wind and solar power would be gradual, not overnight, as it has historically taken time for Americans to embrace change. Other countries, particularly European countries, are already leading the way on clean energy, and their collective quality of life, already superior to ours, is bound to be more so.

We're not going to have rolling blackouts like the ones Britain had in the seventies or California had in 2001 if we make the transition to renewable sources now. But we'll probably have something more severe than that if we wait to make the transition until fossil fuels become more scarce and the planet is more polluted - that is, after it's too late.