There is probably no good time to have an economic crisis characterized by zooming energy costs, but having one in the midst of a presidential election may be the worst of all possible worlds.
It is now plain that the subject of what to do about energy supplies and energy costs doesn’t fit at all with a presidential campaign that is almost entirely about personality.
The two presumptive nominees for president, John McCain and Barack Obama, are both in danger, months before the election, of becoming caricatures of themselves. McCain is the tough talking and largely unpredictable one, while Obama seems to live on a political cloud where only lofty ideas can survive. It is a disappointing mix.
The Internet offers easy access to the energy proposals of both candidates, but none of it is reassuring.
Obama’s policy proposals are almost mystical. He supports the goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gases by a breathtaking 80 percent over the next 40 years. He would achieve this target by what might be called a “Goldilocks” approach to energy. The nation would somehow use the “just right” balance of conservation, biofuels, wind power and solar energy to make up for any reductions in oil consumption. Nowhere is there a mention of nuclear energy or the role it might play in the country’s future.
Nor is there a hint of increasing oil supplies. The message is plain: If the nation turns this fall to Obama, he will figure out a way to provide for the nation’s energy needs without resorting to more oil exploration or the requirement to build more nuclear power plants. It also should be noted that nowhere does Obama acknowledge that this nation’s population will increase by 100 million or so energy consumers before midcentury.
The remarkable thing about the current debate over energy is that almost no one wants to think about the effect of population growth on energy consumption. This failure is an admission that dealing with the short-term problems is about all anyone can handle. The more distant future will just have to take care of itself.
Both candidates dodge any discussion of immigration policy, and so neither has wanted to even include immigration in the same sentence as energy demand.
But if Obama’s policy proposals seem to be fashioned from blue sky, McCain’s are a simple study in contradiction, if not confusion.
The Arizona senator has endorsed a policy that would allow individual states to decide if they want to allow offshore oil drilling. While some might, others probably would not. McCain tries to get around this problem by saying he would offer to share offshore oil revenues with states that would allow drilling. His proposal is more of a hope than a promise.
The senator is a bundle of contradictions in other areas, as well. He wouldn’t mind oil rigs off the coast, but he still wouldn’t allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a place so remote almost no one would see them. More bizarre still, is the senator’s position on nuclear energy. He has embraced the concept of building 45 new nuclear power plants, but in 2005, he voted against the energy bill that provided tax credits for the building of nuclear plants.
McCain says he voted against the legislation because it was a “grab bag” of energy proposals. But it was the only meaningful legislation advancing nuclear energy in the past few decades.
Under ordinary circumstances presidential elections are a good means for deciding major policy matters, but that assumes the candidates will accurately reflect the choices facing the nation. They do not, so given the current tendencies to elevate personality over policy no one should expect the election to assure much of anything on future energy policy beyond the choice of who will eventually decide it.
Al Knight of Buena Vista (alknight@mindspring.com) writes twice a month.
