energy myopia

For your consideration, a simple graph...


...depicting global, commercial energy production since 1800. Despite a few small hiccups, all of the lines, and especially all of them taken together, move in only one direction. Up.

And it's pretty easy to interpret the big story from this little picture: the entire viability of the Developed World, since industrialization's first meek stirrings in the 1840's, has been premised on an ever increasing consumption of energy.

What with oil over $100 a barrel now and all the talk about clean and sustainable energy development, you'd hope this picture was familiar to the people who stand to do most with it (like maybe the head of government of the world's largest economy). Let's see what America's presidential candidates would do about our looming energy predicament.

First, the Democrats:

Clinton would: decrease US foreign oil consumption by 50% by 2025; develop 20% renewable energy standard for power companies; make federal buildings carbon neutral;

Edwards would: reduce fossil fuel dependence through $13B "New Energy Economic Fund"; develop 25% renewable energy standard for power companies; allocate $1B for automakers to apply latest technology; raise fuel economy standard to 40 mpg by 2016; promote ethanol use

Obama would: decrease US foreign oil consumption 50% by 2025; support ethanol and blended fuel initiatives; support coal to liquid fuel legislation

Richardson would: "make the US the Saudi Arabia of wind, solar and biomass"; move vehicles toward 100 mpg; push for 20% improvement in US energy productivity; reduce foreign oil to 10% of total

Hmm. Richardson actually seems to have a sense of the magnitude and urgency of the situation (though you'd hope so since he used to be the Energy Secretary). Too bad he's not sufficiently "presidential" (read: slightly chubby) to have any shot at the nomination.

And the Republicans:

Giuliani would: support increased use of nuclear power and probably lean heavily on the advice of the fossil fuel-oriented energy companies he's consulted for or represented legally

Huckabee would: support increased use of nuclear power, drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "promote alternative fuel technologies"

McCain would: promote a system of greenhouse gas tradeable allowances and greatly increase the use of nuclear power

Romney would support drilling in the ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf, increase energy efficiency in government buildings and vehicles, promote biofuel development, increase the use of nuclear power and "work to make the US energy self-sufficient in the next couple of decades"

The collective dedication to nuclear by the Republicans should raise a red flag. I'll be the first to agree that fission has its role to play, but blurting this out to the exclusion of a truly considered policy suggests magical thinking of the "salvation by technology" variety.

Yes, the Democrats come off as somewhat more enlightened, but that's not the point here. My point (which none of these good folks cares to address) is that for 200 years the core assumption of our stability and affluence is sustained growth through ever greater energy gulps. Yet all anyone wants to talk about is use reduction and source swapping. Which makes no sense, since if you're basing forecasts on current use you're bucking every trend of the last two centuries, so what you should be talking about is how we're going to manage the seismic consequences of bucking every trend of the past two centuries.

There's such an opportunity here to frame this energy/environment/growth plateau issue and make a stand. Real hinge of history stuff. Yet no one even hints at it.

And I wish someone would get this issue, this do we really think we're gonna grow forever issue, out in public. Because the time is coming when the climate vs. comfort question has to get answered - when some combination of economic and political pressures forces a decision about whether we backslide to dirty energy or suck it up and do the hard work it takes to transcend the carbon lifestyle for real. And when that day comes it would be nice to have a president with the backbone to make the hard choice.

twelve dollar gas

Because what we pay for energy is just way too little.

Most of us feel otherwise, since gas and oil are more expensive than ever and not much is changing to make us need less of them. And of course there's our collective optimism and faith in eternal economic growth and technology's impending miracle that will replace petroleum with some new clean fuel too cheap to meter.

But what's the probability of this really? How likely is it that we'll stumble into another societal energy feedstock that can provide the equivalent of 80 million barrels of oil per day at the cost of extraction? Coal, oil and natural gas were the three matches we were given to ignite a perpetual, clean energy future. These matches are burning down pretty close to our fingers (or we're coughing on their smoke) and we haven't done such a great job getting that fire lit.

Energy use is notoriously inelastic - we don't use less as the price goes up - but twelve dollar gas would cost the average driver in America a buck every two miles and it wouldn't be long before this giant sucking sound started to change our driving habits. And the way we heat and cool our homes. And perhaps it would sober us up to the fact that we've been tapping a trust fund for the past century that's stopped earning interest.

It will really hurt. Bad. The entire global economy will convulse and spasm through the detox. But maybe, though only maybe, if a significant slice of this massive capital reallocation can find its way into renewable energy investment, maybe we will get that fire going before those matches are just smoldering ash in our cold hands.