Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 25, 1991 TAG: 9102250288
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
So why does Bush refuse to lead on the home front?
The country has rallied behind him to resist Iraq's grab for control of oil supplies. With patriotic spirit running high, there could be no better time to ask that Americans support an energy policy to reduce the crippling dependence on foreign oil that helped draw us into this war.
Yet Bush has found soldiers easier to lead than citizens. The energy plan he announced last week stood in sharp contrast with, and undermines the goals of, his military boldness. It gives short shrift to conservation and to development of alternative energy sources. It puts faith in expanded use of fossil fuels. It's a prescription for continued addiction to oil and unbroken dependence on fuel from the most volatile area in the world.
While our military personnel kill and die in the Middle East, the president shrinks from requesting even a modest sacrifice at home - even though this could head off the possibility of future conflicts over petroleum and protect the nation from future economic shocks.
Remember when Jimmy Carter sought a new energy policy? He called on Americans to embrace it as the moral equivalent of war. We've got the real thing now, so we needn't look for equivalents. Only for an energy policy.
No, a superpower can't revert to hunting and gathering. We need energy, lots of it - including oil. In themselves, there is nothing wrong with such administration proposals as faster deregulation of natural gas (a clean-burning fuel) or increasing competition among electric utilities for wholesale power. As Bush suggests, greater use should be made of clean-coal technology. The president also has taken up Ronald Reagan's dream of reviving the moribund nuclear-power industry. That's fine if it can be done without slighting safety regulations.
It's all right, too, to increase domestic oil production where the environmental risk is acceptable. The opportunities for such production, though, are more limited and expensive than many imagine. Under Bush's plan, the United States would still depend on imported oil for 45 percent of consumption.
Meanwhile, his plan overlooks the advantages of increased fuel efficiency and other energy conservation measures. Better fuel efficiency standards alone could save up to 10 times the estimated production potential from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And a barrel of oil found by expanded exploration is burned and gone forever. A barrel of oil, or its equivalent, saved by conservation is bottomless. For as long as a conservation measure is in use, the saving in energy repeats itself.
The president wants new buildings better-insulated. But the biggest consumers of energy, automobiles, are sacrosanct. Increasing auto fuel economy by 40 percent over the next decade - to 40 miles per gallon - would save 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. That's nearly four times all the oil America imported from Iraq and Kuwait combined before Kuwait was invaded last August. According to a recent poll, 80 percent of Americans support improved fuel-efficiency standards. Bush is listening instead to Detroit.
His energy plan calls for no increased gasoline efficiency. It includes no hefty gas tax that would discourage overconsumption of oil, help pay debts run up in earlier times of indulgence, and spread a little of the pain now felt by those fighting the ground battle in the Persian Gulf. Bush's plan says: Let someone else make the sacrifice.
Back home, Saddam Hussein dolls reportedly are big sellers; Americans like to stick pins in them. Rather than accept sacrifice ourselves, we seem to prefer easy, often empty symbolism. It looks like voodoo. So does the president's energy policy.
by CNB