Energy’s Future Leaves Left and Right in a Muddle

Type_webhead_here Liberals and conservatives are of two minds about energy policy. Wait -- make that four minds.

When the subject concerns oil exploration and extraction -- off Virginia's coast, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or in the Bakken formation in Montana and North Dakota -- conservatives trumpet optimistic reserve estimates indicating huge opportunities that will wean us from dependence on foreign suppliers and boost the economy in the process.

On this page a few days ago, syndicated columnist Robert Samuelson suggested the oil shale in Colorado alone could hold more black gold than Saudi Arabia. According to Investor's Business Daily, "developing all our offshore oil resources, including Alaska's, would in coming years add $8.2 trillion in additional GDP, generate $2.2 trillion in total new state and federal tax revenues, [and] create 1.2 million new jobs . . . ."

Liberals say conservatives wildly overstate their case: The amount of oil recoverable using currently available technology is actually much smaller, they contend, and the amount of economically recoverable oil -- that is, oil whose extraction cost is lower than its market value -- is even less. Furthermore, say liberals, even if oil in places like ANWR and the outer continental shelf can be recovered, it won't do anything to solve our problems today. As the Sierra Club has argued about offshore drilling: "It would take at least a decade to bring new leases into production, and 20 years for them to reach peak production."

Conservatives shoot back that new extraction techniques are being developed all the time. For instance, "scientists have developed innovative techniques to reach ANWR's oil with virtually no impact on the land or local wildlife," President Bush asserted. And just look at U.S. Geological Survey figures for the Bakken formation, which now put the amount of recoverable oil 25 times higher than the USGS estimated 14 years ago.

BUT WHEN the subject turns to renewable energy, the script suddenly flips. Liberals paint rosy scenarios in which transitioning to non-carbon-based energy sources will create millions of new jobs and usher in an era of unparalleled prosperity. And conservatives grumble that it can't be done.

In the same fact sheet in which it pooh-poohs offshore drilling, the Sierra Club promotes "a new generation of cars getting 50 to 100 mpg, with electricity coming from renewable sources"; "liquid fuels from sustainable, cellulosic biofuels from native prairies, grown in places where they don't need fertilizer and pesticides"; and "low-carbon electricity sources like solar, wind, [and] geothermal."

How do you get 100 miles to the gallon? The Sierra Club doesn't say. How long will it take to get there? Same answer. Presumably, technological innovation will solve those riddles.

In a major address on energy policy recently, President Barack Obama likewise waxed enthusiastic about "creating new sources of energy," "new forms of fuel to power our homes and cars and businesses," and a national transition to a "new, clean-energy economy."

How would this be accomplished? "Ingenuity." Oh! Problem solved, then.

On the other side of the political divide, voices that see techonological ingenuity figuring out how to extract oil from miles beneath the ocean floor for a reasonable price and little or no environmental cost dismiss green-energy proposals as wildly unrealistic.

HYBRID-ELECTRIC cars, sniffs National Review, are too expensive. According to Robert Samuelson, "re-engineering the world energy system seems an almost impossible undertaking. Countless practical difficulties would arise in trying to wean the U.S. economy from today's fossil fuels . . . . The selling of the green economy involves much economic make-believe." The Manhattan Institute's Drew Thornley insists the Obama energy plan is "based more on myth than in fact, more on hope than in reality."

And just as environmentalists say domestic drilling can't possibly meet our energy demands -- not even when cars get 100 mph? -- The Wall Street Journal contends that "for the foreseeable future, renewables simply cannot provide the scale and volume of energy needed to meet growing U.S. demand."

Well. If conservatives are right about the miraculous power of technological innovation to exploit formerly unrecoverable fossil fuels, then they have little business criticizing optimistic liberal projections for advances in green-energy technology.

By the same token, if liberals are right about the power of technological innovation to invent new energy sources, then they have no business dismissing the potential for technology to extend existing energy sources even further.

Both sides need to make up their minds.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or .