WASHINGTON – Some critics said they were appalled that President Obama used his update to the nation on the Gulf oil spill last week to remind us that an over-reliance on oil carries many negative consequences, both inevitable and potential.
But when better to focus on a problem than when a tragedy has captured our attention?
Would Amber alerts have come into being without the anguished impetus of the parents of an abducted child? Flame-retardant baby clothes if children hadn’t been burned? Shoulder straps in the back seats of cars if passengers hadn’t been nearly cut in half by lap belts?
Obama was right to link the oil spill disaster to the need for action, and the scolding from chronic complainers was off base.
In fact, Washington can multitask. The president and congressional committees can put the screws to BP officials, force the creation of a claims fund and discuss restrictions on future deep-water drilling while at the same time working on an energy policy.
Sen. Richard Lugar certainly thinks so.
He has been discussing the outlines of a conservation- and efficiency-based approach to reducing fuel consumption for months (in fact, for years). However, Lugar chose to formally present his version of a bill two weeks ago, amid unrelenting headlines and top-of-the-newscast coverage of the Gulf Coast scourge.
The timing might have been coincidental, but the subsequent news coverage was not. Bill introductions – especially bill introductions by a senator who is not the chairman of a committee that has jurisdiction over the issue – are notoriously unattended. But because of the backdrop of the Gulf oil spill, Lugar’s bill introduction pulled in a crowd. Obama even called Lugar last week with a “way-to-go” message.
Lugar, of course, is not alone in offering up energy bills. The House has passed a version that would force utility companies to reduce their greenhouse gas-producing emissions or buy credits from other utilities that emit less.
This approach was popular once. Lugar and then-Sen. Dan Coats voted for cap-and-trade legislation in 1990 when it was used to spur utilities to produce less sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain.
But cap-and-trade has fallen out of fashion and is now excoriated as a liberal plot to ruin U.S. manufacturing and send oodles of Americans into bankruptcy.
An attempt to place a limit on how much pollution coal-fired utilities and manufacturing plants can emit – envisioned in legislation drafted by Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman – ain’t gonna happen. The backers simply can’t produce 60 votes in the Senate.
Obama’s speech Tuesday was notable in its omission of any mention of carbon taxes of any sort. Even though the White House spokesman the next day said Obama hasn’t backed off his support of a carbon tax approach, Robert Gibbs went on to say that “there are a number of proposals. That’s why Sen. Lugar and Sen. Kerry both got calls.”
Gibbs specifically mentioned proposals for increasing energy-efficiency standards in buildings and increasing fuel efficiency requirements for cars, light trucks and heavy-duty trucks. All are included in Lugar’s bill.
Obama’s left flank felt betrayed when he didn’t veto the health insurance legislation that didn’t take a single-payer approach. No doubt they will feel betrayed if he refuses to support any energy bill that doesn’t set up some kind of taxing system to deter carbon emissions.
Folks who think cap-and-trade is the way to go should continue to fight for it. But at the end of the day, as they say so often in leadership circles, let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Creating stiffer efficiency requirements for building construction, forcing cars and trucks to get better mileage, supporting tax credits for solar and wind energy, getting back into the nuclear energy game – all of these are steps toward reducing the U.S. use of oil, whether imported or drilled in mile-deep water.
They are all good approaches, and they are all worthy of support. Cap-and-trade of coal emissions no doubt would get us there sooner.
It is really a market-based system. Polluters can decide for themselves how to reduce emissions or pay to emit more. It worked with sulfur dioxide.
But pragmatists know the political environment is not what it was in 1990 when Coats and Lugar first opposed the cap-and-trade approach, worked to get concessions for the Midwest and then voted for the final bill.
Besides, a policy that excludes cap-and-trade in 2010 does not mean the idea couldn’t be revived when the economy is stronger.
Having higher mileage requirements for cars and light trucks (and any requirements for heavy trucks) does not mean that factories and utilities can’t someday be required to produce less pollution.
Bravo to the idealists of all sorts for laying out their best cases. But it is the pragmatists like Obama and Lugar who will move us along in a direction surely everyone agrees is essential to our national security.
