Back to the Future
Monday's news seemed reminiscent of 25 to 30 years ago: the people of this nation were encouraged by the gummint to conserve energy. Now where have we heard that before? For all the derision he's received, Jimmy Carter is looking more and more like a man ahead of his time. Say what you want about those sweaters: he encouraged us to keep our thermostats at reasonable levels, tried to institute a comprehensive energy plan for the country, established the Department of Energy as a Cabinet-level agency, and put solar panels on the White House. Since then, the DOE has become more and more a tool of the monied interests, culminating in recent years with a closed-door meeting with Cheney to formulate energy policy. In the wake of Enron, not much has been said about energy, until now.
We've now got Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman telling us to go easy on the thermostat, don't develop a leadfoot while driving, and otherwise try to conserve energy as winter looms. We've even got a mascot for all this: the Energy Hog-- leave it up to Smirk to make sure everything's got a nickname! But so far, all it is is an advisory, a few tips, and that's that. No call for all of us to do more than just tick the thermostat down a few notches and make sure our car tires are inflated. Something tells me this administration needs to re-read the history of the 1970s, and then come up with something a bit more substantive. Some of the circumstances are rather similar-- the energy crisis during Carter's time came amid turmoil in Iran, and the economy was hounded by slow growth, difficulties with unemployment, and the specter of inflation.
Hello? We've got ourselves mired in Iraq, there's problems with growth, unemployment, and thanks to the costs of oil rising, we're possibly on a collision course with inflation-- if not right now, then definitely in the near future. Rather than creating characters with cool names, it might behoove Smirk and Scowl to corral their oil and energy sector buddies, crack a few heads, and then start formulating a policy that serves the country and not the coffers of the obscenely rich CEOs of transnational energy companies. For one thing, solar and wind-powered energy are ideas that surfaced during the 1970s, and certainly should be used now.
It would also help if the Corporate Media and the rest of us would recognize an opportunity, and instead of making fun of, ignoring, or defying changes in our daily habits, listen, learn, and modify. People made fun of Carter in his sweaters, but if we had followed his lead and made some drastic changes then, I wonder just how better off we might be now? Perhaps less dependent on foreign oil? Maybe not driving around in SUVs and other gas-guzzlers? Possibly even able to stretch out the energy sources we do have for another generation or so, thus buying time to find alternatives?
Some things this administration could do would be to explore commensurate pricing of oil; investigate price gouging (which I suspect happened in the wake of Katrina; there's no way California's prices should have gone sky-high, when our oil is derived using a special formula thanks to state laws regarding emissions, and we don't get our oil from areas that were affected by the hurricanes-- yet we had gas priced well over $3 at the time and only just now coming down slowly); establish fuel economy and efficiency standards for all forms of transportation; lower the speed limits again (yes, I know going 75 seems like a god-given right, but going slower actually stretches out the gas in your tank)-- they used to be 55 just about everywhere, and during WW II, a war period when we were actually asked (*gasp*) to make sacrifices, the national speed limit was 35 MPH; encourage the housing industry to develop and build smaller, more energy-efficient homes; explore and use alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal; and most of all, develop and encourage long-range solutions for the day when oil, coal, and other sources of energy are no longer available. Urban planning needs to be changed too-- the day will come when traveling to and from all these suburbs and exurbs isn't going to be feasible, and then we're really going to be up the creek.
So while the 70s were definitely not an idea of anyone's favorite decade to relive, it wouldn't hurt us to listen yet again to what people like Carter were saying then; we could benefit from it now.
We've now got Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman telling us to go easy on the thermostat, don't develop a leadfoot while driving, and otherwise try to conserve energy as winter looms. We've even got a mascot for all this: the Energy Hog-- leave it up to Smirk to make sure everything's got a nickname! But so far, all it is is an advisory, a few tips, and that's that. No call for all of us to do more than just tick the thermostat down a few notches and make sure our car tires are inflated. Something tells me this administration needs to re-read the history of the 1970s, and then come up with something a bit more substantive. Some of the circumstances are rather similar-- the energy crisis during Carter's time came amid turmoil in Iran, and the economy was hounded by slow growth, difficulties with unemployment, and the specter of inflation.
Hello? We've got ourselves mired in Iraq, there's problems with growth, unemployment, and thanks to the costs of oil rising, we're possibly on a collision course with inflation-- if not right now, then definitely in the near future. Rather than creating characters with cool names, it might behoove Smirk and Scowl to corral their oil and energy sector buddies, crack a few heads, and then start formulating a policy that serves the country and not the coffers of the obscenely rich CEOs of transnational energy companies. For one thing, solar and wind-powered energy are ideas that surfaced during the 1970s, and certainly should be used now.
It would also help if the Corporate Media and the rest of us would recognize an opportunity, and instead of making fun of, ignoring, or defying changes in our daily habits, listen, learn, and modify. People made fun of Carter in his sweaters, but if we had followed his lead and made some drastic changes then, I wonder just how better off we might be now? Perhaps less dependent on foreign oil? Maybe not driving around in SUVs and other gas-guzzlers? Possibly even able to stretch out the energy sources we do have for another generation or so, thus buying time to find alternatives?
Some things this administration could do would be to explore commensurate pricing of oil; investigate price gouging (which I suspect happened in the wake of Katrina; there's no way California's prices should have gone sky-high, when our oil is derived using a special formula thanks to state laws regarding emissions, and we don't get our oil from areas that were affected by the hurricanes-- yet we had gas priced well over $3 at the time and only just now coming down slowly); establish fuel economy and efficiency standards for all forms of transportation; lower the speed limits again (yes, I know going 75 seems like a god-given right, but going slower actually stretches out the gas in your tank)-- they used to be 55 just about everywhere, and during WW II, a war period when we were actually asked (*gasp*) to make sacrifices, the national speed limit was 35 MPH; encourage the housing industry to develop and build smaller, more energy-efficient homes; explore and use alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal; and most of all, develop and encourage long-range solutions for the day when oil, coal, and other sources of energy are no longer available. Urban planning needs to be changed too-- the day will come when traveling to and from all these suburbs and exurbs isn't going to be feasible, and then we're really going to be up the creek.
So while the 70s were definitely not an idea of anyone's favorite decade to relive, it wouldn't hurt us to listen yet again to what people like Carter were saying then; we could benefit from it now.
posted by Mr. Sandman | 9:15 PM
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