Let's see what kind of job I can do here at connecting these dots. First off, the Energy Bill that has been worming its way through Congress looks as if it will be passed either today or tomorrow, just in time for the boys and girls on the Hill to get out of the muggy DC heat and go home for a vacation. This will make their president a happy man, as he has been pushing for this bill to make it through this session of congress. This is not the Energy Bill of our dreams, by any means. From an editorial called "Energy Shortage" in the NYT today, this view:
The energy bill that has been six years in the making and is nearing the president's desk is not the unrelieved disaster some environmentalists make it out to be. But to say, as President Bush undoubtedly will, that it will swiftly move this country to a cleaner, more secure energy future is nonsense. The bill, approved by a House-Senate conference early Tuesday morning, does not take the bold steps necessary to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, and it also fails to address the looming problem of global warming.
These shortcomings are chiefly the fault of the White House and its retainers in the House. To be sure, the Senate showed no more courage than the House in its refusal to increase fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks, even though higher standards, by common consent, are the easiest, quickest and most technologically feasible way to reduce oil demand and cut foreign imports.
I wrote several posts on the bill when it moved from the House to the Senate and was being debated in June. If you were visiting the Voice at that time you know that I am among those who consider the bill an unrelieved disaster. The Senate improved some parts of the bill over what the House had passed, but alas, much too little, much too late. There are some tax breaks for renewable energy efforts - the one most likely to affect the driving public is incentives for buying hybrid vehicles. Biofuel is given a nod in the bill, a technology many scientists say will take more energy to produce than it will save when used. The major incentives however, go to...yes...I bet you guessed it...the oil and gas companies! From the same NYT editorial:
Meanwhile, both houses conspired in some spectacular giveaways. One would ease environmental restrictions on oil and gas companies drilling on public lands. The other would shower billions in undeserved tax breaks on the same companies, even as they wallow in the windfall profits produced by $60-a-barrel oil.
For a fairly objective news story on the bill, try this one from the AP. For an environmental critique of the bill, read this statement by Karen Wayland, Legislative Director of the NRDC.
With Congress poised for a final vote on the energy bill, the Environmental Protection Agency made an 11th-hour decision Tuesday to delay the planned release of an annual report on fuel economy.
But a copy of the report, embargoed for publication Wednesday, was sent to The New York Times by a member of the E.P.A. communications staff just minutes before the decision was made to delay it until next week. The contents of the report show that loopholes in American fuel economy regulations have allowed automakers to produce cars and trucks that are significantly less fuel-efficient, on average, than they were in the late 1980's.
Releasing the report this week would have been inopportune for the Bush administration, its critics said, because it would have come on the eve of a final vote in Congress on energy legislation six years in the making. The bill, as it stands, largely ignores auto mileage regulations.
The EPA swears holding the report for release next week has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the Energy Bill's determined march through Congress towards passage. Nothing, we tell you, nothing. The bill that steadfastly refuses to do anything about fuel-economy standards. Nothing to do with it, nothing.
Well okay then, here's the next dot - The new report published jointly by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation (OSAT) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), called "In The Tank: How Oil Prices Threaten Automakers' Profits and Jobs." From the press release about the report:
The Big Three U.S. automakers stand to lose billions more in profits and tens of thousands of jobs in the next oil price spike, according to a comprehensive new analysis released today in Detroit. Tight supplies and rising demand for oil mean that even a modest disruption could send crude prices soaring far beyond today's near-record levels, dealing a devastating blow to companies already reeling from the collapsing demand for their most profitable, least fuel-efficient vehicles.
...(this report) is an important warning to shareholders, management and policymakers that auto manufacturers -- especially General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler -- must make fuel economy performance a top priority if they expect to compete in a world where cheap oil is a thing of the past.
"Our analysis clearly shows the significant vulnerability of the Big Three U.S. auto companies in the event of higher oil prices," said OSAT director Dr. Walter McManus. "In this new competitive environment, fuel economy performance is now a key indicator of corporate competency. The good news is that automakers can manage this risk using good technology and smart design to raise mileage across the board."
So - we have: an Energy Bill that does very little to save energy, encourages the energy industry to continue gnawing away at the planet in its search for yet more sources, does nothing to mandate fuel-economy standards. Oil and gas companies set to raise prices ever higher as resources become ever scarcer. Automobile makers who somehow refuse to see the writing on the wall (even when the wall is their own bottom line), continue to jack up the size and fuel-ravening capacities of ever-larger and more powerful vehicles. Does this not all add up to madness? Kurt Vonnegut himself could not have written a more lunatic scenario, one in which nothing at all makes sense, yet everyone is pretending that it does.
