The energy bill so proudly signed into law the other day by President Bush is 1,724 pages long. But the gist of it can be found on an old, not-so-humorous bumper sticker: "Avoid hangovers. Stay drunk."
The bill is less an accomplishment than it is a capitulation - an admission that the oil industry has the American people right where it wants us and we cannot or will not do anything about it.
The energy bill's focus is on providing at least $14.5 billion in tax breaks, mostly for the existing oil, natural gas and coal producers, hardly a fledgling industry in need of nurturing.
It also pushes federal agencies to give faster approval to permits for energy exploration on federal land, when those agencies clearly can't keep up with the requests they already have, through a process that requires less public input and fewer environmental hurdles.
It makes no mention of the single most effective thing we could do to ease our oil addiction, to increase fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks.
Why? So we can stay drunk.
To its credit, a measure offering tax breaks for buyers of high-efficiency hybrid vehicles - Sen. Orrin Hatch's prized CLEAR Act - was rolled into the bill. So were relatively small sums to develop cleaner-burning coal and to make the greenhouse gas-free option of nuclear power both economically and environmentally possible.
But mostly it's burn, baby, burn. Burn oil. Burn gas. Burn coal. And, thanks also to Utah's Hatch, supposedly burn fuel made from Utah's oil shale and tar sands - if anybody can figure out how.
The president was honest enough to say that his bill would not provide any immediate downward pressure on the record high prices of crude oil and gasoline. But his suggestion that the bill would make America more energy independent in the long run is, at best, a stretch.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the United States now imports some 60 percent of its oil - up from 45 percent 10 years ago - and that that figure could reach 68 percent by 2050. Either that body assumes no real yield from oil shale, or it predicts that, without it, our dependence on imported oil would be even worse.
The first step in dealing with any addiction is admitting that you have a problem. Some people can't do that until they hit bottom.
But when we're talking the energy future of the United States, hitting bottom is going to be mighty painful.Salt Lake Tribune
