The vast majority of Americans want a “fundamental overhaul” of the country’s energy policies, according to the latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll. Most expect that alternative sources of energy will replace oil within the next twenty-five years—but which ones, and how? That’s the rub.
The poll, which drew limited coverage after it was released on Monday, also found that Americans are unwilling to pay higher prices for gasoline to subsidize the development of new fuel sources. Public opinion about energy is rife with such contradictions, according to multiple surveys. Americans strongly favor increased funding for research on wind, solar, and renewable power sources, spending more on energy efficiency and mass transit, and limiting greenhouse gas emissions. But they also want to expand the use of coal, oil, and natural gas.
“With the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico now nearly two months old, the public is sending mixed signals about U.S. energy policy,” the Pew Research Center reported on June 14.
Indeed, after his first speech from the Oval Office, in which he talked about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the future of energy, President Obama drew heated criticism for using the spill to push his policy agenda and for not pushing hard enough. Is it any wonder, as Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show the next day, that every president since Richard Nixon has made bold but unfulfilled proclamations about reforming our energy economy?
“We are an unstoppable, oil-dependency-breaking machine,” Stewart wryly observed. “Unfortunately, the machine runs on oil.”
The machine also runs on coal and gas, of course, but the point is that we’re chasing our tails here, constantly preaching need and support for reform and then failing to deliver. The question is: What can the media do to help break this cycle?
The talk on Capitol Hill this week is about a climate and energy bill that would place a cap on emission from the utilities sector only. A number of savvy commentators, from David Roberts at Grist to Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations, have expressed “qualified” support for this approach (according to the Environmental Protection Agency, electricity generation accounted for 35 percent of U.S. greenhouse house emissions in 2008; transportation and industry contributed 27 percent and 19 percent, respectively). Many environmentalists still prefer economy-wide caps, such as those laid out in Senator John Kerry and Senator Joe Lieberman’s American Power Act, but fear that with,out compromise, the nation might end up with an “energy-only” bill that includes clean-energy mandates, incentives, and subsidies, efficiency standards, and money for clean-teach research and development.
President Obama set the blogosphere abuzz last week when he failed to mention any form (economy-wide or sector-specific) of cap-and-trade during his address from the Oval Office, which some viewed as a tacit admission that the climate half of climate-and-energy legislation is dead in the water. But some environmentalists think a cap is less important than making a much larger direct public investment in technology innovation. Two thought leaders on this front, The Breakthrough Institute and the Center for American Progress, have virtually waged war against one another over this point, with the former stressing the need for investment in technology R&D and the latter stressing the need for carbon pricing.
New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin has covered this virtual war in some detail, as part of his ongoing push for what has been termed an American “energy quest.” Over the course of numerous posts, Revkin has explored what he thinks are some of the short- and long-term steps in that quest, whose ultimate goal is to close the “glaring gap between global energy choices and demand in coming years” in ways that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. This raises the question: What is the media’s in the energy quest?
That The Providence Journal piece was one of the best I have read. Thansk for the link.
#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 24 Jun 2010 at 09:34 AM
If you're looking for ideas, I'm interested in learning more about successful energy conservation methods already in practice in other countries. For example, Copenhagen was severely challenged by the energy crisis of the 1970's and they responded with decades long efforts in modifying lifestyles and implementing new technologies. I cannot recall if I saw this on the PBS series E2 or if it was a web video that circulated during the climate summit (http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagen%25E2%2580%2599s-climate-friendly-bike-friendly-streets/), but somewhere there is a very interesting profile of a Copenhagen family that does not own a car and uses a computer network inside their home to monitor their energy consumption. The major message is that the quality of their lives improved as they modified their lifestyles and that new computer technology, which did not exist in the 1970's, provides practical assist in achieving these goals, much less painfully and less tediously than might otherwise be perceived. Also, Germany's solar industry and use of solar power in a less-sunlit region of the world is incredibly interesting and could be inspiring to Americans. Even modest amounts of reduced consumption produces great impacts, as in we don't have to go off fossil fuels cold turkey in order to improve the bigger picture. As for the price of gas, we learned in 2008 that expensive gas is most painful to America's suburbs and trucking (and $4/gal is the breaking point). So unless the suburbs are willing to develop, and use, better networks of public transportation, it's unlikely poll responders will vote yes for increasing the price of gas.
#2 Posted by MB, CJR on Thu 24 Jun 2010 at 09:43 AM