Way back in 2006, the president delivered a State of the Union address that actually pretended to care about energy policy. Bush graciously acknowledged that we “have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” The president argued, persuasively, that we need to “break” the addiction through the development of “cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources.”
That was then. Now, Bush isn’t especially interested in breaking the addiction; he actually wants to exacerbate it. Indeed, just yesterday, in an unusually dumb radio address, the president said unless Congress approves his drilling policy, Democrats should be considered responsible for higher gas prices. (No, it didn’t even make sense when Bush was saying it, either.)
The NYT’s Tom Friedman does a nice job today of taking the president to task.
Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”
Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”
It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is.
Actually, Mr. Friedman, those are pretty good adjectives.
Just as importantly, the NYT columnist notes that Bush has not only proposed a policy that doesn’t work and takes us in the wrong direction, but has also stood in the way of policies that would make a positive difference.
This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers; this from a president who’s done nothing to encourage conservation; this from a president who has so neutered the Environmental Protection Agency that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren’t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup.
But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn’t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America’s energy profile right now — unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow — and create good tech jobs to boot.
That bill is H.R. 6049 — “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,” which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.
These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. “Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines — because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.
Bush and his Republican cohorts have rejected these tax credits. Repeatedly.
And on a more politically salient point, John McCain has not only sided with Bush on these tax credits, but has also suddenly discovered his disdain for the ban on coastal drilling.
Something to keep in mind.
