Kicking the Addiction: Bush must follow oil challenge with actions

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

“In his State of the Union address, President Bush once again placed on the table the nation's ravenous appetite for energy, calling America ‘addicted to oil,’ a stunningly frank comment from a man who grew up breathing West Texas crude. Is this a Nixon-to-China moment, where only President Nixon, because of his deep roots in the anti-communist camp, could bring about detente? Only if – as Mr. Nixon did with China – Mr. Bush is willing to go to the mat with political capital on the hard energy choices. Otherwise, the result will be more years of energy-dependence chatter without significant accomplishments.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I'm afraid it was only a sound bite calculated to help the President politically, not to do anything serious about the problem. The Bush deficits leave this President with no money for grand new spending programs. The Iraq War, the Katrina Hurricane, the tax cuts leave both the treasury bare and President Bush's political capital expended as well. Calling for energy independence from the Middle East serves many purposes. It plays to Americans' visceral distaste for the oil sheiks of the Persian Gulf. It sets the stage for renewal of calls for more drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico. It presents the appearance of reaching out to Democrats.

But is the President serious about energy independence? Judging by how little of substance he proposed, no. The funding for research only restores funding he himself cut when he first took office, which was never all that much to begin with. There was no mention of conservation in his speech. The Vice President once famously dismissed conservation as "a sign of personal virtue", not a sound energy policy. Until the nation, led by the President and Vice President, reverse that attitude and promote conservation with federal regulations, tax and spending policies, the President's seriousness is in question.

Also, the President's speech failed to mention global warming. That slowly developing, long-term global disaster could be a prime justification for an alternative energy program by the United States and the world. Yet, the President shies away, not only from conceding the strength of the science, but from even mentioning the phenomenon in his speech to the nation. Why? Surely not to show how serious he is about weaning America from its "addiction to oil".

The proof that Americans are right to be skeptical came less than a day later, when the Secretary of Energy clarified the President's comments. He explained that, today, America imports over 2 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East. In 2025, that's expected to be 6 million. But the President's initiatives will keep it from being even higher. New technologies can displace what would otherwise be demand for another 5 million barrels per day, or over 75 percent of our expected imports. In other words, we import 60 percent of our oil today; we'll be importing 60 percent in 2025.

So, why would the President present it all as a plan to "make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past"? Politics. It plays well for the 2006 mid-terms. And by 2025, the President himself will be long gone back to the ranch.