In recent weeks energy policy has moved to the fore in the US presidential contest. This is a welcome change: front and centre is where it belongs. Sadly, the issue has come to prominence in a way that inspires little faith that the next president will get it right.
To their credit, Barack Obama and John McCain have repudiated the Bush administration’s neglect of climate change. In addition, both emphasise the need for greater “energy security” and “energy independence” ”“ which is also fine, provided those terms are correctly construed. So far, however, neither has presented a good strategy for achieving these aims, and neither has even begun to prepare the electorate for the costs of such a policy. On this second point, in fact, it is rather the opposite.
The problem is that climate change, economic stability and geopolitics are not the factors that have pushed energy to the fore. The price of petrol at the pump ”“ which one can describe, without exaggeration, as a national obsession ”“ gets the credit for this. At $4 a US gallon, less than half of what one pays in the UK, the distress is extreme. The candidates therefore have to deal with contradictory public sentiments. Voters genuinely want the country to curb its carbon emissions and moderate its addiction to imported oil, but more than that ”“ much more than that ”“ they also want cheap petrol. Presidential candidates are understandably inclined to tell voters they can have everything they want, even when, as in this case, they cannot.
I am not advocating putting aside all the discussion regarding polution of the atmosphere but lets start including the remaining large nations of the earth. The earth is stated as being our “..island home..” Forests throughout the world are being depleted for fuel by a need for a source of cooking heat. Let us also include many nations in the Middle East that still use dried animal dung for the same. With only a tenth or less of the worlds population the US is not going to solve a global problem alone or overnight.
Especially not when the major polluters such as China and India and Mexico are given a ‘pass’ in every major discussion on the topic.
The US is the one developed, industrial nation that actually HAS been doing something about the problem. Cleaner air and water than 30 years ago; more forested and National Park land and set aside conservation/ wildlife areas then ever before; etc.
But when fingers are pointed, to which country are they pointing? Right. The U.S.
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