The Oil Drum

Mr. or Madam President,

Vice President Dick Cheney once famously quipped "The American way of life is non-negotiable." I submit that while our next president might not be so brash in stating this, the root of our energy problems can be traced to this attitude. But, nature doesn't negotiate. It doesn't appear that any of the remaining presidential candidates understand the basis of the problems we face: Oil is a depleting, finite resource - albeit one crucial for the "American way of life."

Because this resource is so crucial - and obviously not just for Americans - depletion is going to drive prices up as consumers bid for dwindling supplies. Threatening to sue OPEC isn't going to change that. Threatening to tax Big Oil into submission isn't going to change that. Mandating that we will invent new technologies to meet a greatly increased Renewable Fuel Standard isn't going to change that. These are the sorts of proposals that merely demonstrate that your grasp of the problem is superficial. And you have to understand the problem in order to begin addressing it.

In response to a recent query from an independent student newspaper in the UK, I wrote up an editorial piece on the politics of biofuels. That essay is reproduced below the fold. (The original can be found here.)

One of the intentions was to point out for European readers why the U.S. and the EU have begun to diverge on their biofuel policies. In the U.S. this is mostly a political issue, because our primary biofuel is home grown. In the EU, biofuels are mostly imported, so the EU can take a more objective view.

Thanks to David Roberts over at Grist for picking up Hillary Clinton's new climate and energy plan, which was just introduced in the last couple of days, and can be found copied under the fold and in PDF format here. (Thanks silence!)

I had hoped to have time to give you a good analysis of both Clinton and Giuliani's plans, but I'm just swamped. So, I wanted to give you a crack at HRC's, then next week we'll talk about Rudy's; it's long, and it's under the fold. Enjoy.

A couple of days ago I was reading the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate transcript. Of course I am always interested to hear what the candidates have to say about energy. There were a lot of good comments, and the usual spattering of dumb comments. But I won't dissect them right now. What got me to thinking were the comments of John Edwards (on Page 2):

Looks like the Democrats are trying to make some headway into creating energy policy. As you may have already seen, a popular Democrat obsession is the perception that oil companies are making windfall profits and gouging the consumers (e.g. Harry Reid's blog). I hope to return to this topic on TOD—to vent my frustration with it—very soon.

Along similar lines, Senator Hillary Clinton recently gave a speech to the Cleantech Venture Forum, which describes itself like this:

The Cleantech Venture Network LLC is a membership organization bringing insight, opportunities and relationships to investors, entrepreneurs and service providers interested in clean technology. We do this through related information products, advisory and online services, and the Cleantech Venture Forum series of events.

We introduced the "cleantech" concept in 2002 and have since popularized it as a viable investment category. We believe cleantech is one of the next and necessary waves of business innovation. Our goal is to ensure "good money meets good deals".

I don't need to provide commentary on Clinton's speech, since Dave Roberts on the Gristmill blog has so eloquently done it for me. Go read what Roberts has to say. (Also, you shouldn't miss Roberts' dissection of the concept of "reducing dependence on foreign oil".)