There are so many maddening aspects of the current national debate on energy policy that it’s a challenge to even list them, let alone arrange them in order of importance.
One of the minor irritants is local.
State television viewers have been lately treated to a blizzard of ads touting the Democratic candidacy of Jared Polis for the 2nd Congressional District. Polis, it is said, will take on “Big Oil” and work for clean alternative forms of energy.
These messages are paid for by Friends of Jared Polis, but it turns out that the biggest, warmest and most important of the “friends” of Polis is Polis himself. While some of his friends have given small change, Polis has so far contributed more than $5 million of his many millions to his own campaign. The core message of his campaign seems to be: Beware of riches that come from “Big Oil” but pay no attention to rich guys trying to buy elections.
It turns out that one of the main political responses to high energy costs, in Colorado and elsewhere, is a desire to take money from those who have it and give it to those who don’t.
Gov. Bill Ritter backs a ballot measure to increase taxes $300 million or so on oil and gas and give the money to college students. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, wants to take oil profits and give the money to those he thinks could best use it.
These are terrible ideas. If Ritter thinks the taxes on oil and mineral companies are too low, submit a tax increase to the voters on that issue. It requires no skill to dream up proposals where someone else’s taxes or wealth could be used for the benefit of someone else. The state has already gone down this road with no good long-term effects. Measures on open space, lotteries, tobacco taxes and inflation-adjusted school aid come to mind. In every case, earmarked funds skew the budget, limit the options of the legislature and almost always end up creating as many problems as they solve.
Obama’s plan is dumb on several levels, especially as an illustration of shameless political pandering and class warfare.
Two obvious points have been overlooked in the energy debate. The first is that oil, whether one likes it or not, is an extremely efficient form of energy. Anything that competes with it must be compared both in cost and in energy content. Those who say we must invest in alternative forms of energy are really saying we must publicly subsidize the cost of the favored forms of energy so they can compete with oil. Coal generally gets no such subsidy, but wind, solar and the laundry list of other sources couldn’t work without it.
As the late Milton Friedman so often reminded us, there is no free lunch. Conservation itself isn’t free. The person who can’t, or won’t, get in a car because of high gas prices isn’t doing the things that serve a mobile population and a consumer-based economy.
The second simple point that seems to be always overlooked is that profits accrue to those who provide goods or services that are in demand. If soda pop turned out to be the fuel source of the future, it is soda pop makers that will earn future profits. Ethanol producers, wind farmers and those preaching the wonders of biomass production are not involved in charitable work. They are (take a deep breath) trying to make money. The reason there is profit in oil is not because oilmen are uniquely greedy. It is because energy, especially oil, is much in demand and will be for the foreseeable future.
The nation will not be well served until its leaders get at least as smart as its ordinary citizens. If there are two impulses that must be suppressed, it is willingness to oversimplify and blame Big Oil and the eagerness to believe the fairy tale that conservation and clean forms of energy are “cheap” and energy independence is “just around the corner.”
Al Knight of Buena Vista (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears twice a month.
