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Sunday
20 May 2001 ET OPINION Bush is right to put his foot on the gas By Mark Steyn GEORGE W BUSH announced
his "national energy policy" on Thursday, and it turns out those
Europeans who've denounced him as an oil industry stooge have underestimated
the man: he's also a coal industry stooge and a nuclear industry stooge. The
Republican President's energy policy is to have more oil wells, more gas
pipelines, more electric grids, more nuclear plants. Oh, and don't forget
opening up the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. At this
point in US network news reports, it's customary to pause for lyrical footage
of the world's largest caribou herd gambolling across the tundra on their
annual migration. If Bush has his way, they'll just have to vacation in Florida
like the rest of us. The reason for the
President's new policy is the "crisis" facing America. "If we
fail to act," he says, "this great country could face a darker
future, a future that is unfortunately being previewed in rising prices at the
gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California." But the
Grand Old Party's plans have not met with approval. Bush's energy policy is
"a cesspool of polluter giveaways", huffs the Sierra Club, North
America's leading association of yuppie conservationists. "GOP seems to stand
for Gas, Oil and Plutonium," says Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle.
Which prompts the obvious question: what exactly do environmentalist Democrats
stand for? After all, the
environmentalist Left is opposed to oil exploration in the Arctic because it
thinks we should give up our gas-guzzling Jeep Cherokees for rinky-dink
electric cars. Okay. In that case, with all these electric cars, we'll need
more electricity, so we should build some nuclear power plants. No, sorry, say
the environmentalists, we can't risk another Three Mile Island. Okay. Well, how
about coal-fired plants? No can do. Coal's too dirty. Greenhouse gas emissions.
Okay. You guys are in favour of mass transit so let's go back to wood-fired
steam trains. A bit cumbersome. No, sorry, say the environmentalists. We're
opposed to logging. We want a ban on forestry work in environmentally sensitive
areas such as forests. This is the genius of
the Bush approach. By being in favour of everything, he's brilliantly exposed
the fact that the other side's in favour of nothing. No nukes. No wells. No
refineries. No exploration. No nothing, no matter how safe, clean and efficient
the energy industry gets. Thus, the no-policy policy of the Clinton
Administration these last eight years. Between 1990 and 2000
the US economy grew by more than 30 per cent. It was absurd to expect the
country to be able to absorb that growth without any increase in its energy
supply, and in California the contradictions finally caught up. Which state has
the most rigorous conservation programme? California. Which state has the
lowest per capita electricity consumption? California. And which state is
sitting in the dark waiting for its air conditioning to be switched back on?
Californians have learned the hard way that conservation is not a viable policy
for a non-stagnant economy. In fact, environmentalism isn't even good for the
environment. Feel-good California-style "conservation" is utterly
wasteful. Recycling? You could fit a whole century's worth of America's garbage
in one big square landfill, about 10 miles by 10 miles. Think of all the
man-hours lost to the economy by obliging the populace to serve as unpaid
municipal garbage operatives by rinsing every container and putting their
shampoo bottles into the box for HDPE2 plastic and their peanut butter jars
into the box for PETE1 plastic. If all that time and money had been devoted to
genuine environmental advance, who knows what might have been achieved? Even at its least
destructive, "conservation" is mostly trivial posturing. You like
solar power? At the moment, it accounts for 0.1 per cent of US energy
production, almost all of which is for devices which heat swimming pools. So if
there was a tenfold increase in swimming pool construction you might be able to
get it up to 1 per cent, but the only way all those homeowners would have the
money to build their new pools is through the kinds of economic activity which
depend on oil, gas and electricity. The President made a
few soothing noises about conservation: if you want to drive an electric car,
he won't stop you and he'll even give you a tax break on it. But the
Administration's real views were expressed more caustically in the
Vice-President's speech in Toronto last month. As Thomas Friedman wrote in The
New York Times, "Judging from his sneering remarks about conservation, Mr
Cheney believes that conservation should be a misdemeanour, akin to smoking
marijuana. Real men drill wells." Yes, they do. Because a
better word for "energy" is "power", in every sense. Without
coal to make coke, the 13 colonies wouldn't have been able to cast the cannon
that helped them win the Revolutionary War. Conversely, the President who
hectored the American people most about conservation came to symbolise a more
profound lack of power. Last week Jimmy Carter re-emerged to pat himself on the
back and complain that "it has been more than 20 years since our country
developed a comprehensive energy policy". It's true that in 1980 most
Americans were agreed on a comprehensive multi-stage approach to the country's
energy situation. Stage 1: Drive to polling station. Stage 2: Vote Jimmy Carter
out of office. Bush and Cheney have no
intention of going the same way. You can look on America's use of 97
quadrillion BTU in 1999 as a "cesspool of pollution" or as the small
cost of running the engine of the world's economy. Each of those BTUs is
generating about twice as much GDP as it did 50 years earlier, a tribute to
increased energy efficiency. But Bill Clinton sat by as petroleum imports overtook
domestic production for the first time in American history. The Department of
Energy switched off the lights and went to sleep. For eight years, the only
exploration and drilling rights were those the President exercised on female
subordinates. And with each passing day the consequences of Clinton's
narcissism become clearer. Not content with lobbying a rotten egg at John
Prescott's beloved Kyoto Accord, Bush has gone further and landed a solid punch
on the entire concept of guilt-trip conservationism, shoving it over the wall
into the landfill of history. He has come up with a plan that starts from a
radical proposition: the people are entitled to live their lives the way they
do and it's time to ensure the energy supply needed to support them. |