My personal recipe for getting through a state of the union address is a gin and tonic and an ephedra (a herbal stimulant that’s legal again in the US). Aware of the crushing tedium of such speeches, their writers have learnt over the years to insert a couple of lines every now and again just to see if the audience has already slipped into a coma.
Bill Clinton told the world that “the era of big government is over”. I vaguely remember spluttering what was left of my drink at the time. The more counterintuitive a statement the better. Clinton would have woken more of us up if he’d pledged a tax on condoms. But for some reason, in eight addresses chock-full of little proposals, he missed the opportunity.
And so this year George W Bush told Americans that they were “addicted to oil”. It was like being warned by Kate Moss of the dangers of Red Bull. There was a brief flurry of excitement, a sudden rubbing of the collective eyes, but then, almost as quickly, a yawn.
Yes, the guy from Texas whose energy bill gave oodles to big oil made a feint to the green caucus. No one should be too alarmed. This president has never asked Americans to make any sacrifices in the war on terror; he has never vetoed a spending bill; he has never raised a tax; he has added more than $20 trillion to America’s long-term debt in a mere five years. He isn’t actually going to ask people to use less oil, let alone adopt what was, one should sheepishly recall, a central plank of John Kerry’s election manifesto.
He’s just a traditionalist. Every president since Jimmy Carter has vowed an end to America’s foreign oil addiction. Maybe Carter meant it. He sounded clear enough. In 1979 Carter declared that “beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 — never”. I’m not sure if he stamped his foot at the time.
Carter vowed to end dependence on foreign energy by 1990. He was not alone. Ron Bailey, a libertarian writer, pointed out last week that even Nixon had promised energy independence — by 1980. Ford moved the date back to 1985. Carter’s 1990 was just another kick of the can down the road. The second Bush has just promised 75% independence by 2025. Some kick. Some can. Last year, in the same address, he vowed to put men on Mars. Here’s my bold prediction: there will be Americans on Mars before there will be no Middle Eastern oil in the American economy.
Almost as soon as the speech was made, the administration scrambled to reassure its Saudi friends/enemies/evil-doers/clients that the president didn’t really mean it. That whole Middle East oil reference was “purely an example”, Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary, explained.
Bush surely understands, given his experience in the oil business, that there’s a global market for oil, and that if Americans reduce their intake, the most likely to suffer are the Canadians, whose oil is more expensive to produce. Terror will still be funded by Arab oil money — because if the US doesn’t buy it, China and India will.
The point, apparently, was energy independence. Previously the Bush administration had proposed drilling in the Alaskan wilderness in that endeavour but Congress balked at the environmental consequences. Although the president’s own Texas ranch is a model of environmental friendliness, he hasn’t exactly made conservation a central issue of his presidency.
He has raised diesel fuel efficiency standards but he passed an energy bill with scarcely a nod in the green direction. He doesn’t believe in climate change. He’s put some government money into hydrogen cars, but they need oil or coal in the first place. He isn’t proposing an actual, new nuclear power programme. Instead, he’s touting ethanol from wood chips and switchgrass (while keeping tariffs on cheaper, better foreign ethanol based on sugar cane).
Market conservatives were cool about the initiative, as well they might be. The truth is that the only thing that has ever, or will ever, change Americans’ attitude towards energy is a little thing called price. In that sense the recent rise in the cost of petrol is the best thing to happen for America’s energy independence (if not for SUV-making Detroit) in a long time.
New non-carbon based energy sources will only get real private sector investment when oil prices make other energy sources look like bargains. It’s no accident that hybrid cars have taken off in sales as petrol has taken a bigger bite out of Americans’ pay packets.
The one thing the American government could do to wean the US off oil is simple. All you have to do is raise the petrol tax. Alas, no one likes higher petrol prices, especially in the rural heartland, which is over-represented in the Senate. North Dakota, for example, has two senators for 600,000 people. California has two for 34m. There’s a reason urbanites tend to lose in energy policy debates. And there’s a reason why most oil substitutes require big subsidies to agricultural companies in the Midwest.
After 9/11, however, there was a golden opportunity. For a short time the nation could have agreed to radical sacrifices to counter the oil-rich terror sponsors in the Arab Middle East. The president could have urged a petrol tax increase as a way to pay for the war, slowly deprive terror regimes of America’s oil payments and accelerate technological research.
There was and is a burgeoning right-left consensus among foreign policy hawks — “geo-greens” — and old-style environmentalists. Alas, the president merely asked Americans to go shopping. Big Daddy Government would protect them, just as Big Daddy Government will now come up with new technology to rescue them from the consequences of their own actions.
As the president knows from personal experience the first thing an addict must do is recognise he has a problem. The second thing he has to do is change his own behaviour. This president took five years to get to step one. Somehow I think it will be past 2025 before Americans get any further.
