I wish they’d make up their mind

February 21, 2006

At this point, I almost don’t care which energy goal the White House picks; I just want them to pick one and stick with it. Right now, that seems to be a bit too much to ask.

From the State of the Union:

“Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

From the day after the State of the Union:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.

[The president] pledged to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.” Not exactly, though, it turns out. “This was purely an example,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

From yesterday’s Bush speech in Wisconsin:

“But the American people will be amazed at how far our technology has advanced in order to meet an important goal, which is to reduce our imports from the Middle East by 75 percent by 2025, and eventually getting rid of our dependence totally.”

The reality is that we’re talking about a pretty modest goal anyway. The United States gets less than a fifth of its oil from the Middle East. If we reduce just those imports by 75%, it’s really only a reduction of 1.9% a year for 19 years. A “dramatic improvement” this is not. For that matter, there’s nothing in the president’s plan that would stop private companies from buying anyone’s oil, whether it’s from the Middle East or not.

As goals go, Bush’s isn’t terribly impressive. But the fact that the administration can’t even make up its mind as to whether this actually is their goal isn’t exactly encouraging.

I was amused to hear they managed to ‘find’ five million in funding for the research facility in Colorado that Bush is visiting today – after cutting their funding a few weeks ago, resulting in 30 people being laid off…

  • This story’s so complex – for the Washington press – that the Administration won’t even have to get The Dick to shoot someone in the face as a distraction. I mean it’s got numbers ‘n’ stuff.

    Bush’s minions must’ve found that the original story, even though it was “purely an example”, had polling traction with the sub-morons. If so, the myth will be told and retold at closed “town meetings” – though no legislative products will ever see the light of day.

  • It’s the same thing as when Rumsfeld decided the Global War on Terror was no longer going to be called the Global War on Terror, but Bush came back the next day and said no, it’s still going to be called that.

    Bush has made up his mind that we’ll reduce our Middle Eastern oil dependency 75 percent by 2025. And we know Bush once he’s made up his mind about something. No one else in his Administration is serious about pursuing this, but they let Bush continue to say it because it’s a nice-sounding talking point and it makes George feel good about himself.

  • What I find fasinating is that it takes months of coordination by all parts of the Administration to pull together the issues and positions expressed in the State of the Union address.

    It takes one phone call from the Saudi ambassador to overturn it all.

    That, I think, talks to our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

  • The reason you are having difficulty is that these statements do not express the the actual policy of the Bush administration, but rather their spin. The administration’s actual policy can be seen in how they allocate funds, and in fact is a perfect example of how Republicans have governed for the last 6 years. Even though renewable energy has been a ‘priorty’ since the beginning of the Bush administration (check early speeches), the budget for the national renewable energy laboratory (NREL) has been cut back. Recent weakness on climate change issues was publicly exposed by Katrina and censorship at NASA. This meant that Bush speechwriters had to counter this in the SOTU speech: ergo renewable energy. To publicize the idea that they are doing something about the problem, they schedule a visit to NREL, not knowing (because they are politcos and not policy wonks) that funds for the research center had been cut and many people have been laid off. A day before the president’s visit, other funds are suddenly found to rehire laid off researchers. Now here is the icing on the cake. While the general cause of the budget shortfall at NREL is a steady decline in federal support, the specific reason for the $28 million shortfall at NREL is that THIS MONEY WAS DIVERTED FROM NREL BECAUSE OF CONGRESSIONAL EARMARKS FOR OTHER PROJECTS.

  • CB, I don’t understand how you maintain your position on this. It requires a strained reading of the quotes to assume that the policy is to reduce Middle Eastern oil imports by 75% rather than the much more likely to move beyond a petroleum-based economy, which, happily, will consequently reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil by 75%. The context of the first quote, ie “move beyond a petroleum-based economy” should be enough to understand that the point of that statement wasn’t Middle Eastern oil specifically, but that the point was right there, to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy”.

    Each one of the quotes, especially the second one, “it was purely an example”, makes total sense in that context. It’s very likely that’s exactly what they meant the whole time, and I always understood it that way. Maybe they (like everything else) don’t really mean what they say about reducing oil dependency, but isn’t it more productive to go hold them responsible for the notorious things this “administration” actually does, rather than trying to invent one?

    Re: #1,

    I heard that on NPR this morning, and they said that the $5 million restored those jobs.

  • Hi Rian,

    The problem with moving beyond a petroleum-based economy is that it will reduce our dependence on Canadian oil, and Gulf of Mexico oil, and Texas oil, and Pennsylvania oil, etc.

    This providers all believe they have a permenant right to a portion of yours and mine paychecks. Just like U.S. peanut farmers believe they have a right to a portion of yours and mine tax dollars.

    Breaking our dependence on Saudi oil, which is about the only place where there is surge capacity in the whole world, means changing the country’s whole energy production and distribution structure. And a lot of people dependent on the current structure for their livelihoods.

  • I think Bush’s gee-whiz Tom Swift attitude toward alternate energies is analagous to someone watching TV for the first time after being, say, on a desert island for the past 70 years. What to most people seems obvious and mundane seems so amazing to him–Look, Ma, there’s picture a-moving on this here piece a glass and, by gum, i can hear them too!–because he’s so utterly unfamiliar with it. Perhaps someone needs to get him a gift subscription to Scientific American.

  • I think #9 is on to something. I thought the same thing with Bush’s call for a manned mission to Mars. It seemed a thinly veiled attempt to portray himself as an inspiring visionary, a la Kennedy and the moon program, but seemed to come out of left field. To that point and since, Bush has appeared clueless as to why we might or might not want to undertake such an endeavor, what’s involved or the negative impact it will have on other NASA programs. I’m something of a space nut, so I find these kinds of proposals interesting, but his felt more like something a 9-year old boy might say — and forget about in the next minute.

  • I think the bottom line is that the president’s plan
    is far too little and far too late to offset the
    combined effects of global warming and peak
    oil. A massive effort is needed to wean us off
    fossil fuels in real time.

    Bush’s “example” really seems to say that twenty
    years from now, we’ll still be using 85% as much
    oil as we do now. Couple that with the voracious
    appetite of developing countries like India and
    China and Bush’s plan amounts to nothing to
    solve the coming crises.

    Where’s the 85% come from? Well, if we save
    75% of the 20% from the mideast, that still leaves
    80% plus 25% 0f 20%, using the figures provided.
    Peanuts.

    Alternatively, just look at the federal budget numbers
    for development of alternative energy. Pathetic.

  • Lance, I don’t doubt that it’s a huge undertaking, but I think a more honest debate would be to speculate on the undertaking, what it would require, as you offer, or whether tax-cutting GOP really has the stomach for a national project of this size, things like that, or holding the President to task for abandoning it just like he apparantly abandoned his Mars initiative a few years ago. (Has anyone heard anything about that after the first few weeks of commentary?)

    An honest debate doesn’t start by claiming the President said our policy goal is to reduce Mideast oil imports by 75% and then criticizing him on those grounds, when that’s not what he said. That just makes us look bad to honest Republicans and independants. (Why are the liberals putting words in the President’s mouth? I thought liberals wanted cleaner and more sustainable fuel and less imported oil from undemocratic regimes.)

    We do want cleaner and more sustainable fuel and less imported oil from undemocratic regimes. Right? I sure do. And I think it’s worth initiating a major national undertaking to achieve. But will Bush initiate it? Let’s hold him to it, and make sure he does, and if he cynically fails to support his words like he did with, say, No Child Left Behind, or his proposal to send a man to Mars, let’s blast him for it.

    And what’s more, is that China and India and other countries are growing at a huge pace, and with it their appetites for oil. Global demand for energy is not going to drop, it’s just going to grow more and more quickly. And oil is going to get more expensive. So those industries are going to suffer unless they adapt, whether we like it or not.

  • This is something of a digression, but re: the manned Mars program, which a few people have mentioned, it is, in fact, moving right ahead, as well as a planned return to the moon. Bush may seemingly have forgotten about it, but NASA is taking him seriously — which is puzzling, considering Papa Bush’s Mars plans were completely ignored. (Perhaps Junior’s commissars at NASA have forcibly made sure the program moves ahead? In any event, the media reason for all this is that we have to compete with China and Japan, who both have lunar plans.)

    A lot of money is being already spent on developing the new vehicles needed to get us back to the moon (we even have a target date: 2018) and then on to Mars. The shuttle fleet is supposed to wrap up its work on the space station by 2011 and the be mothballed. Of course, other NASA programs such as space science will inevitably suffer.

  • Just to add some humor Josh Marshall has a funny post:

    This is one of those funny Bush Washington moments.

    The budget cutters axed 32 jobs at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The employees were laid off two weeks ago.

    But apparently no one told them that the political office at the White House had decided to make this energy independence squeeze-the-switchgrass-until-it-bleeds-gas week at the White House. And President Bush is heading over to the lab today.

    The jobs got reinstated; the president says it was all a mix-up.

  • Hi Rian,

    My point is one can not break one’s dependence on Saudi oil. Oil is fungable (I hope I’m spelling that right) and it does not matter where one thinks one is buying it. The problem is one is totally dependent for the next 1,000,000 barrels a day that has to be pumped on the producer who has the surge capacity.

    Which would be Saudi Arabia. They have the reserves and they have the climate. Russia can’t turn its pipelines off or the oil will congeal right in the tube.

    So basically, as you and other have pointed out, we have to get to the next energy/fuel economy. Is that going to be Fusion/Hydrogen, which may have dangers to operate but should not have toxic polution? Though Hydrogen leakage would be a polution.

    Though I wonder about the possibility of killer fogs on our roads when millions of cars are spewing out water vapor ;-(

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