When a former corporate raider is suddenly America’s best hope for energy independence, it’s hard to believe we’re taking the subject seriously.
I recently wrote about T. Boone Pickens’ plan to end our self- destructive habit of spending as much as $700 billion a year on foreign oil.
“You don’t like Mr. Pickens or his idea? You don’t trust him? OK, give us your plan,” wrote John J. King, a wealth adviser in Oakland, Calif.
Fair enough.
It’s easy to criticize the Pickens Plan, the Obama Plan and the McCain Plan, which are fast losing ground to the Paris Hilton Plan.
I am not a billionaire or a presidential candidate, and I don’t look hot in a bathing suit, but I did take a high school debate class in 1978.
That year, high school debaters nationwide resolved “that the federal government should establish a comprehensive program to significantly increase the energy independence of the United States.” This experience led me to the naive notion that internal-combustion engines would be valuable museum relics by 2000.
That was 30 years ago. So imagine my surprise that we are still burning fossil fuels today.
And now we’ve got an oilman who says he believes in global warming and righteously complains that we’ve increased our dependence on foreign oil from 24 percent in 1970 to nearly 70 percent today?
So much for my high school debate team.
Not that there haven’t been some technological improvements along the way. Like the new hybrid Cadillac Escalade that General Motors is launching this month. GM boasts that this $71,685 hip-hop-mobile will get — drum roll, please — 20 to 21 miles per gallon.
Meanwhile, market forces seem to be taking care of the nonhybrid version, which gets about 10 miles per gallon and may be getting too expensive for even the rap stars who’ve made the “Slade” an icon.
Its U.S. sales are down 29 percent so far this year. Yet GM is still betting some customers will always go for the bling-bling, especially if they think it’s green. Said Jim Taylor, Cadillac general manager, in a news release last week: “In a changing marketplace emphasizing fuel-economy technology, Cadillac is proud to be the only luxury brand offering a hybrid in this segment.”
The segment being what? Monster trucks?
Obviously, technological changes are not keeping pace with the rapid downturn in the price of oil. Some analysts are now pondering the possibility that oil prices may not return to their July 11 peak of $147 a barrel for years to come.
On Monday, oil slipped as low as $113.27 before ending at $114.45, and the only people who appeared to be keeping it from falling lower were the Russians aggressively firing off rounds in Georgia. Perhaps they just remain long on oil.
The lower oil falls, the more our little addiction to foreign suppliers becomes acceptable. This is why the ideas we talked about in the 1970s barely materialized. This is why the ideas babbled in the current election cycle may also never come to pass.
Oil is just a commodity. It goes up. It goes down. And when it goes down, it’s the best fuel in town. So, for those of you who are wondering, here’s the Al Plan in two words: Just wait.
Al Lewis’ column regularly appears Wednesdays and Sundays: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
