What Should the Administration Be Doing?

Responsible and competent people who have studied the problem of Peak Oil, (including Robert Hirsch and his colleagues) agree that efforts will be needed to create alternative sources of energy, to reduce demand for oil through heightened energy efficiency, and to redesign entire systems (including both cities and the rural agricultural economy) to operate with less petroleum.

The Hirsch Report’s methodology involved the examination of three scenarios:

Scenario I assumed that action is not initiated until peaking occurs.
Scenario II assumed that action is initiated 10 years before peaking.
Scenario III assumed action is initiated 20 years before peaking.

In all three scenarios, the Hirsch study assumed a “crash program” scale of effort (that is, all the resources of government and industry are marshalled to the tasks of creating supplies of alternative fuels and reducing demand through efficiency measures). The study found that, due to the time required to start efforts and the scale of mitigation required, Scenario I will result in at least 20 years of fuel shortfalls. With 10 years of preparation, a 10-year shortfall is likely. And with 20 years of advance mitigation effort, there is “the possibility” of averting fuel shortages altogether. The Report also concludes that “Early mitigation will almost certainly be less expensive than delayed mitigation.”20

In other words, if global Peak Oil is 20 years away or fewer, or we believe it might be, then we must begin immediately with a full-scale effort to address the problem.

Most Americans would understandably prefer to solve the dilemma simply by switching to alternative fuels, thus enabling them to maintain their current habits. But, as we have already noted, there are problems with that strategy.

Biofuels (ethanol, wood methanol, and biodiesel) require land area for production and are plagued by the problem of low net-energy yields. According to the calculations of Jeffrey Dukes of the University of Massachusetts, over a hundred tons of ancient plant matter are concentrated in every gallon of gasoline we use today.21 Granted, modern methods of biofuels production are more efficient than nature’s slow means of producing crude oil, but still this analysis should give us pause: trying to replace a substantial fraction of our 20 million barrels per day of national oil consumption with biofuels could potentially overwhelm an agricultural system already destroying topsoil and drawing down ancient aquifers unsustainably.

It is possible to produce liquid transportation fuels from coal and natural gas. However, natural gas is itself a problematic fuel in North America (domestic production peaked in 2001), and coal—a low-quality hydrocarbon—would present a host of environmental and practical quandaries if we tried to increase mining sufficiently to replace a significant proportion of our oil budget. In the end, coal is likewise a depleting fossil fuel: while it is often said that we have hundreds of years’ worth of the stuff, that assumes current rates of consumption and ignores variable quality; assuming dramatic increases in consumption (for oil replacement) and taking into account the fact that much coal offers a low energy yield, those centuries shrink to a very few decades.22

Which brings us to the strategies of conservation, efficiency, and curtailment. These clearly present the best opportunities, though efforts along these lines will eventually require significant changes in Americans’ habits and expectations.

Our automobiles could be made much more fuel-efficient, though this will require government leadership via higher CAFE standards. But over the long term automobiles and trucks simply aren’t good options for transportation, given their inherent energy inefficiency. Thus the nation will need a much-expanded freight and passenger rail system. Our cities, most of which have been designed for the automobile, need to be made more neighborhood-oriented and walkable, and provided with light-rail transit systems. Meanwhile agricultural production must be freed, as quickly and completely as possible, from fossil-fuel inputs. All of these efforts will require substantial investment and many years of work.

If, as the Hirsch Report tells us, the market will be incapable of shifting investment incentives quickly enough away from the old oil-based, energy-guzzling energy infrastructure and toward the new alternatives-based, super-efficient one, then government will have to lead the way through a sustained commitment of effort on a wartime scale. The estimated one to three trillion dollars consumed so far in the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, had they been spent instead on domestic energy security, would probably have represented an appropriate level and rate of funds allocation.

What Has the Administration Done?

Before examining what Bush and Cheney have done (and not done), we should in fairness note that previous administrations are far from blameless. During the Clinton–Gore years, imports of oil increased while CAFE standards languished. However, in a court of law the incompetence or even criminality of others is seldom a viable defense for one’s own culpable actions.

That said, in light of the threat and the needed effort, what has the current president actually accomplished?

First of all, the administration effectively buried the Hirsch Report. For many months it was available only on a high school web site, then on the Project Censored site; only toward the end of 2005 did it appear on a Department of Energy site. There has been no public mention whatever of the Report by any official in the Executive Branch. Thus the administration has sought not to respond to warnings of approaching crisis, but simply to muffle the warnings.

During the past six years, funding for renewable energy programs and for energy efficiency has not increased substantially. Meanwhile the administration has consistently sought to remove subsidies for the nation’s passenger rail system, Amtrak, while continuing to support immense subsidies for highways.

To be sure, Bush has occasionally spoken about the need for an energy policy, as in a speech to the nation in April 2005:

First, we must better use technology to become better conservers of energy. And secondly, we must find innovative and environmentally sensitive ways to make the most of our existing energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal and safe, clean nuclear power. Third, we must develop promising new sources of energy, such as hydrogen, ethanol or bio-diesel. Fourth, we must help growing energy consumers overseas, like China and India, apply new technologies to use energy more efficiently and reduce global demand of fossil fuels.23

I would disagree with a few of these suggestions, but over all this is not a bad summary of what actually needs to happen. But talk is cheap, and talk that accomplishes next to nothing is, in this situation, a criminally negligent diversion and waste of time. The words just quoted were spoken in the context of the president’s promotion of an energy bill that actually did very little except to increase tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry.

In his 2006 State of the Union address, Bush said that the U.S. is “addicted to oil,” and put forward the goal of reducing oil imports from the Middle East. The next day his staff backpedaled, saying that this goal was only an “example.”24

Five years into the Bush administration, the nation is more dependent on imported oil than ever before. It is facing an impending energy crisis that a government-funded study says will be “unprecedented” in scope and consequences. And needed preparation efforts are nowhere to be seen.

Given all this, how will impeachment help? While it would be justified as a punishment for ineptitude or criminality, impeachment will not materially assist the nation to deal with Peak Oil unless current officials are replaced with ones who understand the problem and who are prepared to implement policies that radically shift America’s priorities in terms of energy, transportation, urban infrastructure, and agriculture. Looking out over the current political landscape in Washington, it is difficult to identify who those new officials might be. Nevertheless, it would help the nation to start now with a clean slate, and with a popular mandate for the new team of leaders to move rapidly to achieve energy security.