On Tuesday, I attended the Set America Free Coalition’s first in a series of energy policy events featuring 2008 presidential candidates.  The speaker was Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS).  After profusely, effusively (and a little awkwardly) thanking his hosts for giving him the time for a genuine “policy speech,” Brownback launched into a reasonable, if not groundbreaking, oratory advocating a range incremental steps toward energy independence for North America over the next 15 years.  His best turn of phrase was probably when he called for US dependence on the Midwest rather than the Mideast for our energy.  It’s one of his campaign speech staples.
In addition to extensive facts and figures, Brownback’s talk featured a number of logical and political word games endemic to this genre of “I have a plan to fix energy insecurity in 10-15 years” pitches.  His official energy policy platform calls for increased US ethanol production based on boosting agricultural output in Midwestern states like Kansas (of course), increasing domestic petroleum exploration and production, and expanding use and production of biofuels.  In other words, Brownback—like many of his competitors for the nomination from both parties—thinks our salvation lies in converting food crops and agricultural waste into clean and abundant vehicle fuel.  And that’s pretty much where his plan ends.

Naturally, finding the technology to achieve the miraculous conversion of biomass into gas at a viable price and scale is the key to Brownback’s energy security solution.  Conveniently, he did not get much into the substance of how, whether or how soon that technology will work.  He’s not alone.  Politicians these days toss all their (and our) hopes onto the technological bandwagon for two simple reasons: (1) neither they nor we understand or are expected to understand the technologies (especially when they haven’t been invented yet!), and (2) it is a lot easier to predict a technological revolution than to call for costly, concerted action to change our national infrastructure or our cherished, fuel-burning way of life.  In addition, industries doing energy R&D want government dollars, and politicians are happy to promise those dollars as long as doing so relieves public pressure to undertake tougher legislative solutions.  Meanwhile, we’re all temporarily forgiven for driving polluting cars while we wait for the technological panacea that won’t cost us a penny extra but will save the environment and rid us of our oil addiction.

I’m not saying technology is not a solution, but it is at best one among many solutions, and we should not delude ourselves that some great technological innovation is going to revolutionize energy consumption if we just give the researchers enough funding.  If anything, the great revolution in energy technology already happened when mankind discovered nuclear power over 60 years ago, and that discovery hasn’t done much reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and the unsavory states that sell them.  In part, that’s because of widespread paranoia about the environmental impact of nuclear waste and the association of nuclear-anything with atomic weapons.  But it’s also because of our skyrocketing demand for energy.  Opposition to nuclear plant construction and increasing power consumption are social, political and economic problems that require in-kind solutions, including tough legislation.  The technology is not much good without the will to use it on an appropriate scale.

Brownback’s most conspicuous omission was any real discussion of conservation, aside from a self-satisfied reference to his family’s purchase of their second hybrid car.  Kudos to Brownback for driving a hybrid, but forgive me for pointing out that unless we discover a way to run car engines on political egos, hybrids still burn an awful lot of gasoline.  Plug-in hybrids might be a better start toward getting total fuel consumption down since they run entirely off wall-socket current stored in their batteries for the first 30 miles of any trip (though that energy has to come from somewhere, too, and right now fossil fuels are the biggest source).  But the 800 pound gorilla in the room is still the problem of getting Americans to drive less, no matter what kind of fuel they use.  Not many ’08 campaign platforms feature that unpopular idea.

An especially thorny dimension of the “total driving mileage” problem is our commercial transportation infrastructure—namely the trucking industry.  Hybrid technologies are almost useless for long haul travel, which is almost exclusively what truckers do.  And trucks burn an awful lot of Middle Eastern petroleum (diesel, to be specific).  With continuing population growth fueling increasing trade and commerce, we’re going to have to figure out how to reduce trucking mileage.  Some suggest biofuels, but as usual that’s putting an awful lot of weight on a technology that is at present both inefficient and impractical on a wide scale.  We de-emphasized the only serious alternative, rail transport, half a century ago because it was inefficient and could not effectively serve this country’s proliferating suburbs.  (here is the history and a proposal to go back to light rail)  So, even if an electric rail system powered by nuclear reactors offered a relatively efficient long-run replacement for commercial trucking (which it might), we’d still have to invest trillions in building a nationwide rail network up front.  No Congress is going to pay for that.

While I appreciated Brownback’s apparent concession that there is no single, instantaneous solution to American energy insecurity, I can’t accept that all—or even most—of the incremental solutions depend on waiting for the right technology to come along.  Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for the right candidate to come along: one who’s willing to admit that technology, while important, won’t save the day.  What’s needed is the political will to accept the economic and lifestyle tradeoffs necessary to scuttle our dependence on foreign oil.

No related posts.