In the situation we are in, it would be electorally suicidal for a politician to go to the people and say "our lifestyle, as we know and enjoy it, is over. Get used to it, tighten your belts, austerity is here, now and forever till we completely transform our economies, probably not in your lifetime"
As Jimmy Carter's famous "hairshirt" TV address demonstrated in spades. However that does not preclude subtler approaches. Telling people to go freeze in the dark is pointless, especially if that is the likely outcome of current policies.
Telling people that we WILL freeze in the dark for the next 40 years UNLESS we rapidly change policies, and that short term solutions are available if we will embrace them MAY be better received. Tell them that current US Energy Policy serves primarily to insure that Big Oil squeezes the last possible dollars out of their vanishing reserves. Tell them that there are presently feasible alternative energy policies that could, within a few years, cut domestic oil consumption by more than half, (PHEVs for commuters), NREL and at least reduce our balance of payment deficit and exposure to Mid East political risk. while employing significant numbers of Americans to in sustainable energy, carbon capture and sequestration, cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel, etc. Sell both the peril and the promise. If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
Telling people that we WILL freeze in the dark for the next 40 years UNLESS we rapidly change policies,
There are an awful lot of people telling politicians and tradmeds that there is no such inevitability. If they don't believe it, why should they risk their electability ?
They are backward looking people, solving yesterday's problems, not tomorrows. They are lawyers, for whom there is always a counter argument. They are economists for whom nothing is true unless it is measureably demonstrable on a balance sheet, FUD (future undetermined or Fear, uncertainty doubt) is not a quantity. What they re no are visionaries, they cannot project forward beyond the next electoral cycle. They cannot do the right thing if it loses them an election, they dare not. keep to the Fen Causeway
Plus, if OPEC doesn't agree to ship more oil to the U.S. so we can keep on with our current "lifestyle," we will SUE them. So there!
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure. The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow. The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.
The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
