Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
Where are America's formal or de facto energy policies leading us? Where might we choose to go instead? How can we find out?
Addressing these questions can reveal deeper questions-and a few answers -- that are easy to grasp, yet rich in insight and in international relevance. This paper will seek to explore such basic concepts in energy strategy by outlining and contrasting two energy paths that the United States might follow over the next 50 years -- long enough for the full implications of change to start to emerge. The first path resembles present federal policy and is essentially an extrapolation of the recent past. It relies on rapid expansion of centralized high technologies to increase supplies of energy, especially in the form of electricity. The second path combines a prompt and serious commitment to efficient use of energy, rapid development of renewable energy sources matched in scale and in energy quality to end-use needs, and special transitional fossil-fuel technologies. This path, a whole greater than the sum of its parts, diverges radically from incremental past practices to pursue long-term goals.
Both paths, as will be argued, present difficult -- but very different -- problems. The first path is convincingly familiar, but the economic and sociopolitical problems lying ahead loom large, and eventually, perhaps, insuperable. The second path, though it represents a shift in direction, offers many social, economic and geopolitical advantages, including virtual elimination of nuclear proliferation from the world. It is important to recognize that the two paths are mutually exclusive. Because commitments to the first may foreclose the second, we must soon choose one or the other -- before failure to stop nuclear proliferation has foreclosed both.
II
Most official proposals for future U.S. energy policy embody the twin goals of sustaining growth in energy consumption (assumed to be closely and causally linked to GNP and to social welfare) and of minimizing oil imports. The usual proposed solution is rapid expansion of three sectors: coal (mainly strip-mined, then made into electricity and synthetic fluid fuels) ; oil and gas (increasingly from Arctic and offshore wells) ; and nuclear fission (eventually in fast breeder reactors). All domestic resources, even naval oil reserves, are squeezed hard—in a policy which David Brower calls "Strength Through Exhaustion." Conservation, usually induced by price rather than by policy, is conceded to be necessary but it is given a priority more rhetorical than real. "Unconventional" energy supply is relegated to a minor role, its significant contribution postponed until past 2000. Emphasis is overwhelmingly on the short term. Long-term sustainability is vaguely assumed to be ensured by some eventual combination of fission breeders, fusion breeders, and solar electricity. Meanwhile, aggressive subsidies and regulations are used to hold down energy prices well below economic and prevailing international levels so that growth will not be seriously constrained....
PDF available here. also at
JSTOR (free with registration).
Fueling a Competitive Economy. Joseph J. Romm and Amory B. Lovins, Foreign Affairs. Nov. 1992.
Profiting from Energy
AMERICA’S ENERGY and economic policies remain tied to Cold War concepts of national security. For nearly fifty years all of America’s vast resources were directed toward one purpose: containing the Soviet threat of global communism. But the need for a military-oriented industrial strategy fell with the Berlin Wall; long subordinated economic, energy and environmental concerns have risen to the top of the national agenda. Integrating those elements with a refocused military strategy can create a coherent American approach to national and global security for the post-Cold War world: one that is not costly but profitable, and not centrally planned but market-oriented.
The most fruitful starting point for boosting America’s economy and reordering its priorities is energy. Wise energy policy creates both a healthier economy and healthier environment. But energy policy does not work in isolation. Only in combination with farsighted economic, environmental and military policies can it help secure America’s global position for the 21st century. Taken together, those interconnected policies constitute a new and comprehensive approach to U.S. security, defined in the broad sense of sustaining and improving the quality of life of Americans.
America remains an enormously wealthy nation. Reordering priorities and redirecting resources would be enough to ensure that a new national strategy does not require higher taxes for the vast majority of Americans. A coherent national approach combining energy, economic and environmental security creates higher-paying jobs and puts more money in the hands of consumers and businesses. Sensible energy policy reduces the civilian and military costs and the risks of importing foreign oil and frees up huge amounts of domestic capital. Sensible economic policy guides more of that capital, as well as some shifted from military restructuring, toward investments that enhance the nation’s long-term competitiveness. The two policies together reduce the costs of unsustainable resource depletion and environmental damage. The result, an "industrial ecosystem," would make America a more efficient and competitive manufacturer.
Harnessing the market to promote...
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