Category Archives: Energy

Instead, we get THIS insanity

I had my previous post fresh in my mind when I read about this pandering insanity. For those of you too lazy to follow links, here’s the gist:

WASHINGTON, April 25 — President Bush announced a series of short-term steps on Tuesday intended to ease the rise in energy prices, including a suspension of Bushoilgovernment purchases to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a relaxation of environmental rules for the formulation of gasoline and investigations into possible price gouging and price fixing.

This is as bad as when Al Gore got Bill Clinton to loosen up reserves to help him get elected in 2000.

I say "as bad as" because I can’t quite decide which is worse: For a president at war in the Mideast to do this, or for a guy who pretends to care about the environment and sensible energy policy to do it in peacetime. Each action has its own loathsome qualities.

Rationing? Even better

Gas1"Look!" wrote my colleague Mike Fitts in an e-mail yesterday. "– an idea even less popular than your huge gas tax hike!"

"And even better, in my book," I wrote back.

He was referring to this letter on today’s page:

After reading Mike Fitts’ excellent column, (“U.S. helping to keep
oil prices marching upward,” Friday) on the woeful consequences, both
economic and diplomatic, of rising oil prices and of the inevitable oil
shortages to come, I’d like to put another option on the table: oil
rationing, which could bring a variety of benefits.

Many lament the fact that the only ones called upon to sacrifice in
this time of war are those on the front lines (and their families).
Rationing gas would call on everyone to sacrifice, just as during World
War II, when we all had ration cards, not only for oil but for many
other of life’s necessities such as meat, clothing and tires.

Fitts tells us that demand for fuel keeps going up, despite the
steadily rising price, which means leaving it to the market to control
supply and demand isn’t working. So perhaps only the government can
bring this control.

Fitts also points out that since our country consumes 25 percent of
the world’s oil, we can’t lecture other countries on the need to
conserve. But we can lead by example.

Rationing could give us some short-term breathing space as we labor
to find alternatives for the long haul. Yes, it is a political hot
potato, but isn’t it time to at least bring it to the table for
discussion?

HARRIET KEYSERLING
Beaufort

Mike was also referring to my enthusiasm for the idea floated by such disparate voices as Charles Krauthammer, Tom Friedman and Jim Hoagland, advocating a huge increase in the federal gas tax to take the already uncomfortably high gasoline pump prices high enough to depress demand. This would in turn create an oversupply, driving down prices. But (at least in the variant I like), you’d keep the tax rate up and use it additional for such sensible things as reducing the deficit, paying for a Manhattan/Apollo-style project to find and develop viable alternatives to petroleum, and pay for other aspects of our underfunded war — you know, like, put enough troops into Iraq and Afghanistan to get the job done. And note that I call military operations "other aspects" of the war. Reducing our energy dependence and taming deficits are as important to our strategic position as our ability to project force.

Oh, yes: Krauthammer would use the revenue to cut some other tax. But he has to say that; he’s a neocon.

Former Rep. Keyserling’s idea is even better in one respect — everyone would share the pain. With a high tax, the rich would keep on driving Hummers, and the poor would have a lot of trouble getting to work. The main benefit would occur among the middle class, who would make the choice of driving less and, when they bought a car, buying a much more fuel-efficient one. With rationing, everyone would be limited in their consumption. And it would be a more overt, deliberate way of saying, "We’re all in this together, and we’re doing something about it together," rather than letting the market pressure of high prices sort things out.

But then, it wouldn’t produce the revenue. So I qualify my flippant remark to Mike: The higher tax still might be better.

‘Go for it’ column

Bulb_011_1Energy independence?
We only have to decide to go for it

    “From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It’s not a miracle. We just decided to go.”
            — Tom Hanks, as Astronaut
            Jim Lovell in “Apollo 13”

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
I REMEMBER when this country would “just decide to go” and do something that had never been done — something so hard that it seemed impossible — and then just go.
    I was not yet 16 when men first stepped into the gray talcum of Tranquillity Base, and I didn’t know that I was living through the last days of the age of heroic national effort. I thought the muscular, confident idealism of World War II veterans such as John Kennedy was the norm. JFK said let’s go to the moon. It didn’t matter that nothing like it had ever been done, or that the technologies had not yet been invented. We just said OK, let’s do it.
    We built rockets. Brave men stepped forward to sit atop them in hissing, flashing, buzzing, wired-up sardine cans. Slide-ruler nerds who feared no challenge designed all the gadgets that went into the rockets and made them fly true. The rest of us paid the astronomical bills, and suspended our lives to watch each launch, in fuzzy black-and-white. We held our breaths together as though we were the ones waiting to be blasted to glory, live or die.
    And in a sense, we were. That was us. We were there.
    Why did we stop doing things like that? Where did we lose the confidence? When did we lose interest in working together? How did we lose the will?
    Was it the bitter end of Vietnam, which caused us to swear off fighting for justice beyond our borders for a generation? Was it Watergate, which ended common trust in leadership? (I watched “All the President’s Men” with my children recently, and to help them fully appreciate the suspense, I had to stop the disc and try to explain a time in which most people could not imagine the president of the United States would really do such a thing.)
    Was it the end of National Service, which gave rise to a generation that had never pulled together in common cause, and couldn’t even imagine doing so? Was it the “I got mine” hypergreed of the ’80s and ’90s, which made shared sacrifice passe?
    I don’t know. Maybe all of the above. I do know I’m tired of it. I miss the country I used to live in.
    That country would have stayed united for more than a few weeks after 9/11. It would have rolled up its sleeves and sacrificed to make itself economically independent of Mideast regimes that currently have no motivation to change the conditions that produce suicide bombers.
    But we don’t volunteer for that today, and “leaders” don’t dare suggest it.
    What got me started on all this? Lonnie Carter, president of Santee Cooper, said several things last week that sent my thoughts down these paths. He got me thinking how easy it would be for this nation to move toward energy independence, reduce greenhouse gases and even save money. It wouldn’t even be hard, or require sacrifice or inventiveness. We have the tools. It’s a matter of attitude.
    Mr. Carter showed us one of those curlicue fluorescent light bulbs. Big deal, I thought. I’ve got a few of those at home; my wife bought them. They look goofy, and don’t fit into some of our smaller fixtures.
    But Mr. Carter said that while such a bulb costs a couple of bucks more, it uses only 30 percent of the energy to produce the same light, and lasts 10 times as long. That one “60-watt” bulb (really only 15) would save you $53 before it gave out.
    Think how much energy we could save if all of us bought them. The things are already on the store shelves, but most of us bypass them for the old unreliables. It’s a “matter of changing our habits,” Mr. Carter said.
    How about renewable energy? Mr. Carter said utilities already offer that option to customers. But while 40 percent say they would pay a little more for such greener, smarter energy, only 1 percent actually do when it comes time to check that box on the bill.
    Attitude again.
    Then there’s nuclear power. “If our country is interested in energy independence and affecting climate change,” said Mr. Carter, “nuclear is the best option.” It’s clean, it’s efficient, and we don’t have to buy the fuel from lunatics.
    The government is even offering incentives to build the new generation of super-safe plants. But there’s still an attitude problem, as evidenced in the approval process. Santee Cooper plans to build two such plants. Just getting approval will take until 2010, so the plants can’t produce power before 2015. We managed to go from rockets that always blew up to “The Eagle has landed” in less time than that. And this time, we already have the technology.
    “We need all due diligence,” said Mr. Carter. “But we don’t need to drag our feet.”
    Still worried about spent fuel? “We know how to handle it safely,” he said. We’ve been doing so for 50 years. We also know how to put it away permanently; it’s “just a policy issue.”
If we could take such obvious steps, maybe we could then start taking the “tough” ones.
    Maybe we could even put the SUVs up on blocks and reduce our gasoline consumption to the point that Big Oil — and maybe even Washington — would see that they ought to invest some real effort in developing hydrogen, or biofuels, or whatever it takes.
    Did you know that Brazil expects to achieve energy independence this year? Maybe it has become the kind of country we used to be — the kind of country we could be again.
It just takes the right attitude.

Speaking of ‘mature’ industries…

Newspaper companies may seem a bit hapless as they flounder about trying to adjust to new business models and market conditions, but for sheer cluelessness and self-delusion, it’s hard to beat that supreme icon of American capitalism, General Motors.

In its weekend edition, The Wall Street Journal quoted GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner as saying early this year:

"We’ve been ahead 73 years in a row, and I think the betting odds are we’ll be
ahead for the next 73 years."

That was in the context of this story, which led with this statement:

Toyota Motor Corp. is making a big bet that it can ride a host of new
models past struggling General Motors Corp. next year to become the
world’s biggest maker of cars.Toyota_1

This is something I can look at with somewhat greater objectivity than I can the news biz, and my snap reaction to the move by Toyota is, "More power to them."

Why? Because Toyota has produced a higher-quality product at a reasonable price (or at least "reasonable" by 21st century standards). Given that, the company deserves to come out on top. Does it hurt my national pride a little to see my country outstripped by something it has historically done best? Sure. But by our own standards of fair play, Toyota at this point it entitled to take the lead. If the American company starts doing its thing better again, it will retake the honors.

Instead, GM’s reaction is the standard, knee-jerk, stock market-driven reaction of many threatened companies: Cut costs. Having retrenched on benefits, the maker of Chevrolet et al. is planning to lay off 4,000 employees — a tenth of its white-collar work force. It’s a little hard to get all sentimental about an American company that is putting that many Americans out of work.

Meanwhile, Toyota will be hiring Americans to build its cars, possibly even in Michigan itself. Toyota isn’t contracting, but growing. How? Through quality and innovation. Toyota not only makes the world’s most reliable cars, it also has earned the reputation of being the industry leader in new technology. Next year, the Camry will be available as a hybrid. And personally, I think the company is being overly conservative predicting it will only sell 30,000 of them.

As I’ve said before, I’m no biz wiz, but I continue to have this gut belief that the way to grow a business is not to cut costs, but to improve the product.

Despite what some Japanese guy said awhile back about Americans being "a work force too lazy to compete with Japan," I think we can do that over here. We just need to go back to doing what we used to do: Make the best product. The first step is to stop being complacent and wake up to the fact that right now somebody else is beating you at that game, fair and square.

Two birds with one deal?

Being busy with lots of other stuff last year, I never really focused on new Sen. Barack Obama. I didObama notice sort of peripherally that the Democrats seemed to be really excited about him.

I can sort of see why, after a colleague today shared with me this excerpt from a story in The Washington Post:

Last month, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) offered a proposal to raise
federal fuel-economy standards in cars and trucks by 3 percent a year
in exchange for the federal government picking up the costs of retiree
health care. Detroit automakers say the costs are a crippling burden in
competition with foreign rivals.

Talk about killing two birds — increasing fuel economy and lowering the price of automobiles. Of courses, that assumes that automakers would pass on the savings to us (estimated at $1,500 per vehicle), which I realize is quite an assumption. But it could happen.

I have to say, though, that while solving automakers’ health care cost problem is nice and all, how about the rest of us? I don’t know what the solution is, but I agree with Nicholas Kristof when he writes in a column that will appear on tomorrow’s page that something a tad more comprehensive is called for. (I’ll go back into this in the morning and link to it.)

Is God telling us something?

As we’ve all come to learn from bitter experience, the worst place to be when a hurricane strikes is just to the right of the eye as it comes ashore. That’s where the greatest force and the highest storm surge hit, because at that point you’re dealing with not only the head-on circular speed of the counter-clockwise winds, but the forward momentum of the storm itself (at least I think that’s why; any more weather-savvy people out there are invited to correct me).

Conversely, if you’ve got to be within the radius of such a storm, the “best” place to be is to the left of the eye, because that way you just get the hurricane’s “backhand” as it is moving in a direction opposite that of the wind.

Thus Hugo hit McLellanvile harder than it did Charleston, and Katrina slammed little towns in western Mississippi harder than it did New Orleans (not that that was much comfort to New Orleans once the Lake Pontchartrain levee broke).

So it struck me as interesting, looking at the map we ran
on the front page this morning, to see the way Rita had shifted course. Galveston and Houston were able to breathe a little easier, as it looked as though they might get the backhand now, when the opposite had seemed likely earlier. But in shifting course to the east, the greatest force of the storm was now projected to hit the greatest concentration of oil refineries in the region.

Is God trying to tell us something? Is He giving us a more direct hint — since we haven’t taken the earlier ones, which were none too subtle (9/11, Katrina) — that maybe, just maybe, we ought to be thinking about a serious energy policy? One in which we pursue alternative sources of power for all we’re worth while conserving like crazy and in the meantime (as long as we’re still relying on some oil) looking for other places to get and process oil domestically besides the Gulf Coast?

Maybe. But before I make too big a deal about this in theological terms, let’s wait and see where the storm actually does come ashore…