Strings Tied to Industry-Academic Collaborations at "Big Oil U"

American universities may be jeopardizing their academic integrity by giving oil, gas, and other polluting industries unprecedented influence over the research those companies fund on campus, according to a report released yesterday by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

A CSPI survey of nine schools with industry-funded research programs aimed at studying and abating global warming found six of nine let corporate executives sit on boards overseeing grants; five of nine gave companies first rights to intellectual property; and five of nine let companies review and possibly delay publication of studies. The report revealed that industry investment in energy research plunged over the past several decades, and that the university-based programs fall well short of making up the difference.

"It's a cheap subterfuge for carbon-emitting companies," said Merrill Goozner, director of the Integrity in Science project at CSPI and co-author of the report. "They get the prestige of associating themselves with major respected universities, yet can control the direction of research, get first rights to intellectual property, and can delay any finding that doesn't help the bottom line."

According to CSPI, the industry-academic partnerships highlighted in Big Oil U. represent a strategic shift for carbon-emitting industries. Instead of discrediting the science behind global warming, companies increasingly want to be seen as part of the solution. Between 1998 and 2005, Exxon gave more than $19 million to groups that promoted the idea that global warming was a hoax. Yet beginning in 2006, ExxonMobil ads proudly touted its contribution to a program at Stanford, a 10-year $225 million program: "Today an energy company and a leading university share a common goal. The common good." Another ExxonMobil ad bore the Stanford University seal. Stanford gave its industry collaborators special rights in eight of the nine areas measured by the survey. The other energy industry-sponsored programs surveyed were at UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, Princeton, MIT, Rice, Caltech, Georgia Tech, and Carnegie Mellon.

The report recommended that universities accepting corporate funding adopt policies to protect their autonomy and preserve researchers academic freedoms. They included prohibiting representatives of corporate donors from sitting on research programs governing boards; prohibiting industry donors from
controlling the content and direction of research programs; eliminating first rights intellectual property clauses from donor agreements; and ensuring that company representatives cannot make substantive editorial changes in manuscripts or delay their publication.

This story appeared first in Integrity in Science Watch, a weekly newsletter from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Cows into Gas

R. James Woolsey headed the Central Intelligence Agency under President Bill Clinton. He now spends his time trying to convince Americans that national security requires ending U.S. dependence on oil. In Sunday's Washington Post, he had a hilarious mock-conversation between a K-Street lobbyist and "Tehran," whose greatest fear was that politicians will listen to those who think the U.S. would be better off if it shifted 20 million acres to producing corn for ethanol instead of corn for cattle feed. Says Tehran:

"My regime is much better off if nobody understands that. If you'd ever eaten grass-fed beef, you'd know it's quite tasty. The only thing you add to a cow by feeding it corn instead of prairie grass is fat. And since the corn makes cows huge and sick, they need lots of antibiotics, which are used so massively on the dumb animals that it helps make bacterial strains grow immune to the antibiotics more quickly. Sooner or later, that means Americans will find that their antibiotics don't work. So your stupid country now has 20 million acres' worth of corn that basically does nothing but promote cardiovascular surgery and infectious disease."

Congress to Earth: Bah Humbug!

Congress is patting itself on the back this morning for passing an energy bill that raises the fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks (long overdue), and sharply increases the amount of ethanol that fuels them (pleases a special interest -- corn producers).

Meanwhile, to satisfy the president from Big Oil, it couldn't summon the votes to strip $9 billion a year in unwarranted tax breaks from ExxonMobil and its buddies and give the subsidy to solar and wind manufacturers. It also refused to mandate that the nation's electric utilities produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewal sources within a decade.

Here's the card that should accompany the legislation as Congress sends it over to the White House for the president's signature:

Dear President Bush,

Hope your campaign supporters in the oil and utility industries and the corn lobby have a very merry Xmas and a happy new year! Make sure to invite them to the signing ceremony -- and the lobbyists, too.

Warmly,
Congress

P.S. See you in the Sunbelt over the holidays. We know where to go to get some solar (ha ha).

Energy Bill Includes Prizes for Innovation

Here's one you could illustrate with a light bulb over an inventor's head: The House-passed energy bill includes a slew of prizes for major innovations that will help reduce energy consumption in the years ahead. They include:

* $50 million in prizes for various hydrogen fuel cell advances;

* A $10 million prize for replacing the 60-watt bulb with one that gives off just as much light -- and the same soft light -- at 10 watts;

* $5 million for replacing the standard halogen bulb; and

* $5 million for a solid-state "21st century lamp."

Jamie Love over at Knowledge Ecology International has long championed the idea of substituting prizes for patent monopolies to spur much-needed and more affordable inventions. He'll be glad to know his ideas are gaining traction on Capitol Hill.

Energy Bill Passes House. On to the Senate!

Let's pause from our usually scheduled subjects to cheer House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives for passing the energy bill yesterday. The U.S. has not raised the fuel efficiency standard since the 1970s. It's stunning to realize it took six years after 9/11 to get around to it.

Repealing $9 billion in special tax breaks for the oil and coal industries also is long overdue. If $90-a-barrel oil and $3-a-gallon gas doesn't give them enough incentive to drill, I don't know that billions more from the taxpayers will. Better that money should go to homeowners who install solar, drivers who buy electric or hybrid-vehicles, and companies that install co-generation power plants.

There's a lot of pork barrel spending in the bill, of course. The alternative energy fields aren't immune from this disease, especially when it means subsidizing growers in Iowa to produce corn-based ethanol or dubious carbon sequestration schemes aimed at maintaining coal production.

It's interesting to note some of the Senate provisions in that regard (they'll be taking up the bill next week). While increasing the amount of fuel made from renewable biomass from 8.5 billion gallons per year in 2008 to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022, it requires that “advanced biofuels,” which means ethanol not derived from corn starch, must equal 60 percent of the total by 2022. It also provides financial support for increased research in cellulosic ethanol to meet that standard.

The Senate bill also places greater emphasis on energy efficiency, such as setting higher standards for new incandescent and fluorescent lights and home appliances. It also rejuvenates the program for helping low-income people weatherize their homes.

On the other hand, the Senate bill makes a huge push on carbon sequestration, including investment in a large-scale demonstration plant. It seems to me that the billions spent on maintaining our reliance on coal might be better spent on a massive R&D push into more efficient means of harnessing the power of the sun, wind and tides. There's new incentives in the House and Senate bills for households and businesses that invest in the current generation of clean technologies. But people who run out and make these investments will be buying the equivalent of personal computers with 286 chips. As one energy expert put it to me recently: "We're still in the 'rotary dial' era when it comes to green power." It's time to reverse the decades-long decline in clean energy R&D.

$1-Per-Gallon Gas Tax?

It would only be a start on coming up with a decent energy policy.

My wife drives a Prius. I'm still driving a 14-year-old clunker with 140,000 miles on it because I want my next car to be a plug-in (a friend told me over the weekend that all-electric vehicles now being sold in India using power generated by coal would, in a U.S. context, give off the carbon equivalent of 350 miles per gallon).

The politics of oil in the wake of 9/11 are discussed in today's Tom Friedman column in the New York Times. He renews his call for a dollar-a-gallon gas tax.

Readers know I focus mostly on health care issues, and a part of me is pleased that it has risen to the top concern of the American people as the next presidential election approaches. But the truth is that we can bumble along for a few more years yet with our failing health care delivery system.

Our failing energy policies, on the other hand, are threatening to drive us into new wars in the very near term, and totally ignore the long-term threat posed by global warming. When historians look back at the failed Bush presidency, they will surely note his energy policy -- not health care -- as his single greatest domestic failure.

Global Warming Investment Opportunity

Apparently rising concern about global warming -- embraced finally yesterday by President Bush, even if in half-hearted fashion -- is good news for the electric utility industry. The Dow Jones Utilities Average, which tracks the stock prices of leading electricity and natural gas companies, is up nearly 15 percent on the year, double the increase of the S&P 500 average, which hit another record high yesterday.

You'd think the prospect of increased emissions regulations would dampen interest in the stocks that used to be considered investments for cautious grandmas. And nothing I learned yesterday by attending a forum at the Center for American Progress on the prospects for carbon capture and storage systems for electric power plants would have changed that outlook. Indeed, if anything, you'd think the prospects of having to make billions of dollars of investment to build Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle plants that allow carbon capture, and billions more to drill deep wells for underground storage, would send investors fleeing the sector like the plague.

One possibility is that investors are taking the typical short-term view. Energy prices are rising and caps on prices that accompanied ill-conceived deregulatory schemes in the late 1990s are coming off. My own bills here in Maryland are up 50 percent from a year ago, and today, June 1, are scheduled to take another leaps upwards. Who cares about global warming regulations that are still years -- if ever -- in the future.

But there's another possibility. Perhaps investors understand that global warming is a great investment opportunity. If regulatory certainty is guaranteed (i.e., if utilities know that carbon emission rules put in place today won't be repealed tomorrow or ten years from now), then electricity generating plants that meet those rules are going to be a pretty safe place to put your money.

David Hawkins, the former EPA official who now heads the air office of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, was sanguine about impact tough new carbon rules would have on prices. If spread across all utility payers, it would generate just a 2 percent increase in prices, he claimed.

But I think he underestimates the impact that the interplay of deregulated markets -- a legacy of the Clinton years -- and tougher carbon rules -- one probable legacy of the next administration, whether its Democratic or Republican -- will have on individual consumers, especially those that are poor or in the bottom half of the middle class.

Who should pay for the global warming fix? Unless progressives come up with something better than "don't worry it will only be 2 percent" for the people whose bills are going through the roof, those folks may warm to politicians who claim that we don't really have to worry about rising temperatures. The scientific debate may be over. But the political debate has only just begun.

If the head of NASA can say we really don't have to worry about it, then there will be no shortage of politicians willing to say the same thing, especially when the choice for their constituents is between keeping the lights turned on or dealing with a problem whose impact is far down the road.

Subsidizing Big Oil to Get Ethanol?

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and three ethanol boosters made a convincing case this morning at the Center for American Progress. In the words of David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, "ethanol is the perfect Trifecta." It cuts our reliance on unstable Middle Eastern oil, it reduces carbon emissions, and it provides the Democrats (I'd say any politician but we can't expect much for our oilman president) with a wedge issue in farmbelt red states.

I was especially pleased to hear Morris knock down the $4 gasoline tax proposal, whose chief proponent (at least in the media) is Tom Friedman of the New York Times. "I'm all in favor of it in theory and opposed in practice," he said. Why? First, it's a political loser that mobilizes the right-wing anti-tax crowd. Second, it's unfair because people who have to drive will just pay the tax and not reduce their driving. That's what happened in Europe (although it also made them opt for smaller cars). Finally, most of the money in the U.S. would just go to build more roads, which is mandated in many state constitutions and the federal gas tax formula.

Of course, it is possible to realign the formulas, but how likely is that in an environment where the proponents have already stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition to the imposition of the tax?

I was a little disappointed in the small bore proposals for reform from the group. Instead of mandatory fuel mileage standards (I proposed a 60 miles per gallon standard within six years in my article in The American Prospect), Morris proposed a carbon cap-and-trade system. Could work. But it would undoubtedly open up loopholes for big polluters to buy their way out of trouble.

As for ethanol, Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-SD) pushed for higher renewable fuel mandates (where big refiners have to buy a set number of gallons of ethanol to mix into their blends) and shifting the producer tax credits so they benefit smaller, local ethanol refiners set up by farm co-ops instead of the huge ethanol refineries being set up by agri-giants like Archer Daniels Midland. Morris asked for Congress to mandate that automakers install flex-fuel gizmos in all vehicles rolling off assembly lines, which adds a mere $100 to $150 to the price of a new vehicle.

This is Clintonism at its worst. We need a major national commitment to wean the country from oil, which on the domestic front will be the number one national priority of the next administration. We must do it for national security reasons and we must do it for environmental reasons and, for both those reasons, we must do it fast.

Do we create "incentives" for Homeland Security? No. It's mandates and government contracts all the way. So why the double standard? Weaning ourselves from oil is an issue of national and global security. There is simply no way that business can be incentivized to achieve this goal through market mechanisms. Business will respond to mandates, and they will make a lot of money in the process, too. But they're going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

Can Government Go Green?

The following article appears in the April issue of The American Prospect.

By Merrill Goozner

If the “mission accomplished” photo-op was the defining moment of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, the president’s recent visit to the National Renewal Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, defined its energy policy. One week after he embraced alternative energy in his State of the Union address, Bush’s budget axed 32 employees at the nation’s premier alternative energy lab, a facility that developed key technologies for hybrid cars and photovoltaic cells. His political operatives didn’t even know what they had done until a few hours before his visit, triggering a mad scramble to restore the jobs to avoid embarrassing the president.

Too late. Reporters had a field day. But they should have paid more attention to the rest of the administration’s proposed federal budget, the ultimate arbiter of national energy policy. Bush’s TV rhetoric was disconnected from reality.

Programs that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower U.S. dependence on foreign oil got short shrift. Instead, the president proposed lavishing new resources on long-range research programs that had more to do with rewarding key corporate backers -- “clean coal” and nuclear power, as well as corn-based ethanol -- than with building a comprehensive, sustainable energy system.

Under the president’s plan, home weatherization assistance programs will be cut by nearly a third; investment in geothermal, hydropower, and solar heating and lighting programs will be eliminated; and aid for upgrading local building codes (a key element in improving energy efficiency) will be ended. “The states will now have to become the true laboratories of innovation because the federal budget is not helpful,” said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who headed the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration.

In the decades since president Jimmy Carter donned a cardigan to declare energy efficiency the moral equivalent of war, the United States has essentially relied on market mechanisms to wean itself from oil. This was a departure from the 1975 Energy Policy Conservation Act, which required automakers to achieve specific fleet averages in miles per gallon. Unfortunately, corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, which were remarkably successful in achieving their initial goals, were abandoned as a strategy. The CAFE goal was last raised in 1990.

As inflation-adjusted oil and gas prices fell from their 1980s highs, markets responded the way markets do: mindlessly. The U.S. transportation sector became even more dependent on cheap foreign oil; the unanticipated SUV loophole made a mockery of the fuel standards (SUVs are counted under the weaker light-truck standard, not the tougher passenger vehicle one, even though that’s how most are used); the electricity sector adopted natural gas as the primary supplement for coal; and the overall economy lagged far behind its European and Japanese rivals in both energy efficiency and adding renewable sources like solar, wind, and geothermal into the energy mix. Concerns about global warming, air pollution, and defense outlays required to maintain access to Middle Eastern oil were ignored.

During the current Bush administration, these trends accelerated. In earlier days, political proponents of alternatives were driven from the national dialogue by an administration with deep personal, political, and financial ties to fossil fuel industries. Vice President Dick Cheney, launching an energy strategy hatched in secret with his energy industry cronies, famously claimed that energy efficiency and alternatives may be signs of “personal virtue” but have no place in the national strategy. Even after 9-11, which presented the nation with a golden opportunity to move down a different energy path, nothing changed.

However, energy markets have belatedly begun to reflect some of the hidden costs of U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. Hurricane Katrina and global warming, instability in many of the oil-producing regions of the world, growing competition for supplies from China and India, and accumulating evidence that the globe has finally reached its peak oil-producing capacity have kept oil more than $60 a barrel and gasoline prices well above $2 a gallon. Home-heating oil and natural gas prices have increased 16 percent and 24 percent, respectively, in the past year.

Mr. Market is responding to the changed circumstances, sort of. The use of alternatives to oil and gas is exploding. Demand for hybrids, solar installations, and wind power is rising at a 30 percent annual clip. But this consumer-driven response begins from such a small base that it would take decades to push fossil fuels from their preeminent position. Bush’s contradictory strategy both promotes more oil exploration and hopes to hasten energy diversification by giving a push to the supply side. At some point, the cost of alternatives, presumably, will fall below the cost of importing oil.

Unfortunately, it’s the same strategy that minimalist proponents of energy alternatives and reduced dependence on foreign oil have used for three decades without success. The sunk costs of oil, gas, and coal dependency -- the transportation infrastructure, the sprawl, the power plants, the industrial and commercial buildings and processes (not to mention their political influence) -- create inertial forces that adjust to every increase in fossil fuel prices the way a frog adjusts to rising water temperatures. It doesn’t know that it is cooked until it’s too late.

Three potentially powerful political streams could push the government toward more active intervention in energy markets. Labor and its allies have launched an Apollo project to promote the good -- jobs and technological potential of alternative energy strategies. Environmentalists continue to sound the alarm about the consequences of global climate change. And in the wake of 9 -- 11, a vocal element within the national security establishment recognizes that breaking the foreign oil habit requires breaking the oil habit entirely. Operating under the umbrella Set America Free Coalition, they responded to the president’s speech with a call for “a focus on deployment, not only R&D.”

A comprehensive government strategy would proceed on multiple fronts: not just biomass fuels, but higher fuel efficiency standards; not just more research into wind, solar, and geothermal power, but increased state requirements that they be deployed; not just industrial energy efficiency, but higher efficiency standards for lighting, home-heating systems, appliances, weatherization, and building codes. “There is no slam dunk,” says Scott Sklar of the Sustainable Energy Coalition.

Energy consumption in the united States can be divided into three distinct sectors: transportation, electricity generation, and the industrial/commercial/residential sectors. Each consumes roughly one-third daily demand for energy. Each requires its own strategy.

In transportation, the United States should raise the CAFE standard while giving the U.S. auto industry a three-year breathing space for retooling. In addition to lifting the SUV/light truck exemption (except for legitimate working vehicles), the fleet average should be raised to 40 miles per gallon (mpg) in 2010, 50 mpg in 2013, and 60 mpg in 2016. Every vehicle coming off the assembly line should, starting in the next model year, be a flexible-fuel vehicle that can run on any type of alcohol or gas-alcohol blend -- roughly a $150 per car add-on that will have less impact on the new car market than requiring seat belts and air bags.

Transforming the electricity sector will require a mix of federal and state policies, because most utilities are state-regulated. Twenty states and the District of Columbia already ask utilities to obtain a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources like wind, geothermal, solar, or hydroelectric power. At least 15 states have taxed electricity consumers to fund investment in renewables and energy efficiency, which provides a far greater return on investment than building new power plants. All states need to adopt such standards. The federal government should play a stronger role in easing the permitting process for new renewable energy facilities. It should also make permanent the current temporary tax breaks for renewables. “Business won’t invest based on a tax credit that needs to be renewed every two years,” says Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy. “Globally, the market demand is quite good. The question now is whether we’ll have a domestic industry producing it.”

The building and industrial sectors also need a boost from government to leapfrog ahead on efficiency. Revamped building codes and appliance standards and the strategic use of tax incentives would create thousands of jobs retrofitting America’s industrial and commercial sectors. This could reduce energy usage, increase profitability, and restore the competitiveness of lagging U.S. industries.

Greening the U.S. economy has obvious security and environmental benefits. But it is also a high-growth strategy that can provide millions of well-paid jobs for working-class Americans, who are currently the biggest losers from oil dependency. It will never be achieved without the strong hand of government leading the way. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy vowed to put a man on the moon in less than a decade, and the U.S. government got the job done. Is there any reason to think that this nation couldn’t rise to the energy challenge?

Merrill Goozner is a Prospect senior correspondent.

The Necessary and the Insufficient

This month, I'm been invited to be the guest blogger at www.onthecommons.org. So I'll be double-posting in the hopes that many of you will take a look at this project of the Tomales Bay Institute, which describes itself as "a group of outside-the-box thinkers seeking to expand the scope of the possible in American politics and policy." I like the sound of that and I hope you do, too. For now, here's my first post. Future posts will start here with links to the www.onthecommons.org website. Have a peak and enjoy!

It’s going to take a lot more than pouring money into research to protect public goods like the global environment. Once President Bush turned to domestic issues in last night’s State of the Union address (most of the talk was devoted to justifying the ongoing deceit and demagoguery that has marked his administration’s incompetent response to global terrorism), he sounded downright Clintonesque. The cornerstone of his new proposals was a major “American Competitiveness Initiative,” which would double research funding for physical sciences over the next ten years (remember how Clinton doubled the National Institutes of Health’s budget over five years?). Our oil-man-in-chief promised major investments in clean coal, nuclear energy and ethanol. Did I actually hear the president say “switch grass” last night?

But as the New York Times pointed out in a hard hitting editorial this morning, we’re way beyond the research phase when it comes to weaning this country from reliance on foreign oil (which requires weaning ourselves from reliance on oil, period). Ice caps are melting, islands are sinking below the waves, unprecedented droughts are ravaging parts of Africa and the Amazon, and New Orleans is gone. And the President? His eyes are firmly fixed on 2025. Where was the call for raising the fleet fuel efficiency standard to, say, 40 miles per gallon in 2009 (having reported on the Midwestern auto industry for many years, I recognize that a three-year breathing space for retooling is necessary), 50 mpg in 2011 and 70 mpg and 2013?

Research clean coal? This administration has done everything in its power to avoid forcing electric power plants to curb their emissions by installing technologies that already exist. Career enforcement officials like Eric Schaeffer, now at the Center on Environmental Integrity, fled the government because they couldn’t do their jobs.

And how about renewable energy and fuels? This country spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 billion to subsidize farmers to grow sugar for soda pop, corn for animal feed and other commodities. Pay farmers to grow switch grass for ethanol and they will come. This isn’t a research question, it’s a priorities question.

The national government has always played a key role in creating the public goods that set the stage for the next phase of the U.S. economy. It sometimes comes in the form of big infrastructure projects like the Erie Canal, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Interstate Highway System. It sometimes comes in the form of prudent regulation. We have transparent financial markets because of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We have a housing market because of the post-World War II FHA loan program. We have a cleaner and safer environment today because of the 1970s era Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

There is no greater challenge facing America today than becoming a responsible member of planet earth. That means deploying the vast public resources of our government to the task of creating the next generation public good – an energy and transportation system compatible with substantially lower carbon emissions. This research President found time to issue a call for banning embryonic cloning (a direct slap in the face to the stem cell research community), but never once mentioned global warming. That’s all historians will need to know about the content of the 2006 State of the Union address.

Clean Technology on the March

General Motors and Ford are in deep trouble. Their bonds were relegated to junk status Friday. Sales of their big-profit SUVs are plummeting while environmentally-conscious consumers are increasingly turning to higher mileage cars produced – you guessed it – in Japan.

Things have gotten so bad that GM chief executive Rick Wagoner will soon travel to Toyota’s headquarters to “collaborate” on hybrid technology. As a practical matter, this means borrowing technology from the Japanese. A grateful quarter million Americans who still depend on GM and Ford for jobs will be glad to hear the Toyota CEO has agreed the Americans need “breathing room.”

I’m curious why the hard pressed U.S. car makers didn’t rip a page from the drug manufacturers’ playbook. If they had, they would double the price of their cars and run full page ads in the nation’s newspapers claiming that without high prices, Americans will never see the 70-miles-per-gallon vehicles that might put a dent in the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to global warming.

Smart companies see which way the wind is blowing. General Electric this morning ran a four-page supplement in the New York Times touting its wind technology. GE is one of the world’s largest builders of wind turbines for electricity production.

The company hopes to double its “clean technology” sales to $20 billion by 2010. The company plans to reduce its energy emissions by 1 percent over the next seven years and has committed itself to complying with a global cap on greenhouse gases – the Kyoto protocol that the Bush administration refuses to sign.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the recent drift of U.S. political events is wildly out of whack with the rest of the world. Major corporations are realigning their own futures to coexist with our shrinking world.

This is a harbinger of political shifts to come. No matter how much one wishes this country were more democratic, the sad fact is that change only occurs in the U.S. when a substantial portion of the business community signs onto those changes. The day is rapidly approaching when responsible business leaders will recognize that a White House beholden to the most troglodyte elements of their class – the oil conglomerates – is too great a liability to carry on the books.

When that day comes, it will be amazing how quickly the “power” of that small fraction of the body politic known as the religious right will fade – first from the media and then from our consciousness.

Blotting Out the Sun

It was in 1791, while carrying on a torrid love affair with a blackmailer’s wife, that Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first Treasury Secretary, penned his classic “Report on Manufactures.” In it, the far-seeing father of U.S. capitalism laid out the case for a “free people . . . promot(ing) such manufactories as tend to render them independent.”

The U.S. has a long history of subsidizing industry. At the dawn of the republic, Hamilton saw the need to subsidize and protect an infant domestic textile industry against the overwhelming power of the British, whose looms then dominated the world.

I suspect that if Hamilton were around today, he’d probably join with the former intelligence chiefs who this week sent a letter to the Wall Street Journal protesting the wildly out of whack priorities of the Republican energy bill. The media, while focusing on the new Pope, has largely ignored the fact this legislation, thought dead a year ago, is once again moving through Congress on a wave of $2.35-per-gallon gas.

Of course, if Hamilton came back as a subsidy-dependent Houston oilman, he might argue as the White House is doing that opening up the Alaska Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and spending billions more on tax credits and subsidies for the coal and nuclear industries are the wave of the future.

But these technologies will not promote U.S. energy independence. They will leave us even more dependent on foreign oil and environmentally unsustainable sources of power.

Given global warming, the still unresolved problem of storing nuclear waste and the fact that two-thirds of the world’s oil supply lies under Middle Eastern sands, the only way to wean ourselves from foreign oil is to wean ourselves from oil entirely.

That, unfortunately, isn’t on the table. There’s almost nothing in the new energy bill for sustainable energy supplies like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass fuels. Rep. Bill Thomas, Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, threw in a $18 million tax credit for solar installations. That’s right -- $18 million. That’s a rounding error in this pork barrel legislation.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration laid out its priorities last February in its Energy department request. Research into all forms of sustainable energy will get just $353 million next year, $32 million less than this year. That’s less than 20 percent of what Rep. Tom Delay of Texas was able to get done for his constituents alone. His ethics woes didn’t prevent him from inserting a $2 billion subsidy for off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

This fiddling while oil burns is already having a major impact on our economy. Expensive gas is like a huge tax increase on the middle-class and working poor, who must cut back on other spending to pay the tab. But it’s the long-term impact on the economy that would most frighten someone like Hamilton.

If he were around today, he’s probably write a “Report on Energy.” In it, he would point out that the global supply of sustainable energy has increased 15-fold in the past decade and that our major trading rivals are making huge strides in these emerging technologies. Over that time period, the U.S. share of that infant industry fell from about 40 percent to barely above 10 percent. Virtually all the growth was in Japan, which now accounts for nearly half the world supply, and Europe, where wind energy has become a major way to avoid burning carbon-based fuels like coal, oil and natural gas.

Our future as a free people, he might argue, rests on our catching up.

Natural Disaster

Why the energy bill moving through Congress will only fuel our unsustainable status quo
(Reprinted from The American Prospect Online)

October 9, 2003 -- The energy bill moving inexorably through Congress is like a massive oil spill heading for a pristine coastline -- there's not much one can do except contemplate the eventual cleanup costs.

If September 11 changed everything in politics, you'd be hard pressed to tell from this special-interest giveaway. Two years after the attacks, the Republicans are about to pass legislation that does nothing to wean the United States from foreign oil, next to nothing to build a more fuel-efficient economy and precious little to promote alternative sources of energy -- policies that polls show most Americans would gladly support as the domestic component of the war on terrorism.

As it stands now, though, the conference committee, headed by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Billy Tauzin of (R-La.), is cooking up much the same legislation as Vice President Dick Cheney did in his pre-9-11 secret tryst with energy lobbyists. They may remove the unpopular drilling in the Alaskan wilderness from the bill (though in recent days Alaska's Republican delegation has threatened to vote "no" unless it remains in). But the core of the legislation -- $18 billion in tax breaks to the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries -- remains unchanged. The operating assumption, to the extent there is anything more than corporate greed behind the bill, is that the United States can drill, dig and pollute its way to energy independence.

The idea that the bill will promote energy independence is the big lie. As long as the United States continues to depend on oil for its transportation needs (two-thirds of our oil goes into internal-combustion engines), we will remain dependent on foreign oil. America imported 36 percent of its oil in 1973 (this week marks the 30th anniversary of the first Arab oil embargo). This year, oil imports hover around 60 percent of supply. No matter how many tax breaks you lavish on the domestic oil industry, there's simply not enough recoverable crude left in the ground to meet America's SUV-driven appetites.

The other option, of course, is to lessen our need for oil by promoting energy efficiency and switching to other fuels. But alternatives can never gain traction in the marketplace because the price of oil -- despite the two embargoes and the ongoing machinations of the producer cartel -- remains cheap. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) occasionally slashes production to force a temporary upward blip in the per-barrel tariff. But over the long term, OPEC's efforts have come to naught. Oil prices today are, in real terms, more than 40 percent below what they were in the early 1980s.

It's not hard to understand why. First, in the years since the oil embargoes, a number of non-OPEC countries have become major producers. They've given the global economy a temporary reprieve from the eventual day when the demand curve for oil finally exceeds supply. That day will come, as geologist Kenneth Deffeyes persuasively argues in his recent book, Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage. But, thanks to oil-production newcomers such as Russia and Norway, it isn't here yet.

Second, the key producers in a world awash in oil are our dear friends, the Saudi Arabians. The authoritarian kingdom may have spawned 15 of the 19 hijackers, and members of its ruling elite may be suspected of providing financial support for global terrorism. But the Saudis sit on fully one-quarter of the world's proven oil reserves, and that means serious discussion about our dealings with this chronic human-rights violator remains a verboten subject in the nation's capital.

Saudi Arabia repays us in kind. Every time price spikes threaten to disrupt the economies of the industrialized world, the Saudis open the spigots. Indeed, in a post-9-11 world, the biggest threat to the global economy may not be a stock-market crash in New York or Tokyo but a hijacked airliner crashing into the 7-million-barrel-per-day oil-processing facility at Abqaiq, the frightening scenario laid out in ex-CIA agent Robert Baer's new book, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.

Moreover, the world's dependency on the Saudis and other Middle Eastern producers will only increase in the coming decade. Former CIA Director James Woolsey told a Capitol Hill forum this week that "most of the world's oil fields are peaking around now except for those in the Persian Gulf. We're moving to a world where everyone will be more dependent on Middle East oil."

Woolsey also reminded the sparse crowd of Hill staffers and alternative-energy boosters (the forum, called by the Sustainable Energy Coalition to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the first OPEC oil embargo, drew zero media attention) of the elephant in the room: global warming. "Our energy networks are entering an age of crisis," he said. "We in the U.S. are not trying to sink Bangladesh beneath the waves with our SUVs, but we may be doing that." Of course, when the White House rewrites scientific reports to hide the problem and the press shrouds the issue in contrived uncertainty, how can we expect the American people to politically express their will so they can live their lives in a way that will not harm all of humankind?

There is a path away from this economic, environmental and national-security dead end. And it does not require Americans to sacrifice economic growth or even their SUVs. It can be rapidly implemented with technologies that exist today.

A comprehensive program, laid out by former U.S. Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), Republican warhorse C. Boyden Gray and former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta in the July-August issue of Foreign Affairs, would include a number of reasonable steps: widespread use of hybrid engines as a bridge to fuel-cell vehicles, which are still decades away; biomass-derived ethanol (as opposed to corn-derived ethanol, which uses more energy than it produces); clean coal with carbon sequestration; energy-efficient construction; and greater use of renewable energy sources, such as wind, geothermal and solar power.

It sounds like a geek's fantasy. But these sources already account for 20 percent of the global energy supply. More importantly, they are growing at 30 percent a year. When it comes to efficiency and renewables, it is the United States, the globe's energy glutton, that is falling behind.

And that, ultimately, may be the real threat posed by the energy rip-off now being enacted in Washington. The Europeans are the technological leaders in wind power. The Japanese have seized the lead in photovoltaics. The Brazilians have mandated that new vehicles burn up to 85 percent ethanol.

Chris Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, put it succinctly at the forum this week on Capitol Hill: "The danger we face today," he said, "is that if we don't develop a strong domestic market in these technologies, we will not have the companies and we will not have the jobs that will flow from the revolution taking place around the globe." What we're getting instead from the Bush administration is more tax subsidies for the oil drillers and the promise of endless military adventures to protect our access to the dwindling supply of an environmentally destructive commodity.

Marketplace Commentary, 9/29/2001

Marketplace, September 19, 2001

America is in a war against terrorism and people on the home front want to help. But what should they do? Progressives like myself wring our hands about defending civil liberties and stemming hatred during these perilous times. But that’s not enough.

If we want to catch the hearts and minds of the American people, we have to say more. I propose that we use this moment of national grief and unified purpose to advance a positive agenda.

First, let’s immediately wean America from its depends on foreign oil. As Daniel Yergen wrote in “The Prize,” oil has fueled both economic growth and great conflicts in the 20th century. But in the 21st century, it has become albatross around the advanced industrial world’s neck. It is the primary source of not only air pollution and global warming, but of geopolitical instability. Isn’t it shocking that so many of the terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producing state? The technology is there today to end our oil dependency. If it wanted to, the automobile industry could within five years have every vehicle rolling off assembly lines using clean technologies like fuel cells or battery-powered hybrid engines.

Second, America is now faced with a crisis in the airline industry. Let’s build a high speed rail system. That would solve two problems. It would reduce our appetite for oil, and take the pressure off the airlines by eliminating most flights under 300 miles. We’re dreading that airport gridlock and long lines for security checks. We could entangle that mess by shifting government investment into high speed trains. And by building a high speed rail system, it would create tens of thousands of jobs, just what the economy needs right now. And don’t forget: the Interstate Highway System was built in the name of national defense.

Ending our dependence from foreign oil; a high speed rail system; jobs from a major public works project – these home front programs are practical, they are progressive, and they would give the economy a boost. And most important, it would unite the nation in the home front war on terrorism in a way that doesn’t sacrifice our basic freedoms.

In Washington, this is Merrill Goozner for Marketplace.

What's Needed Now: Economic Security

(This article originally appeared in The America Prospect Online. It has been widely reprinted and delivered as a Marketplace Commentary on National Public Radio.)

Over the next few weeks, America will be consumed by debate about how life in this beacon of freedom may have to change to confront the terrorist threat. Liberals will have to think creatively about how to protect civil liberties in an era when it has become apparent that there are cells of people within the U.S. who are willing to engage in indiscriminate mass murder to further their insane politics.

But we have to do more. We must use this moment of national grief and unified purpose to advance a positive agenda that speaks to all Americans, who are desperate for a way to contribute to the war effort. Issues of economic security and policy have not gone away --they have only been upstaged for now by the terrorist threat. Here are a few questions that should not be overlooked:

First, the nation must immediately embark on a crash program to wean itself from dependence on foreign oil. That means substantially weaning itself from oil itself.

The most fitting memorial to the dead of September 11, 2001 will come if, decades from now, the assault is recalled as the event that triggered the end of the era of oil. Oil, as Daniel Yergin wrote in his Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Prize," fueled both economic growth and the great geopolitical conflicts of the 20th century.

But in the 21st century, it has become an albatross around the advanced industrial world's neck. It is the primary source of not only air pollution and global warming, but of geopolitical instability. The nations that, through the fluke of geography, are the source of much of the world's oil, have largely squandered the patrimony that flowed into their wallets. Their spiritually and economically impoverished peoples have become the seedbeds of the fanaticism that has needlessly taken so many lives.

The technologies already exist to accomplish the goal of eliminating half of our oil usage over the next decade. The automobile industry must be given generous tax incentives and subsidies to ensure that every new car that rolls off assembly lines within five years uses clean technologies like fuel cells that are either oil-free or are hybrids. Car fleet fuel efficiency standards should be doubled with generous financial awards for date-certain completion. And then they should be doubled again.

The government should also jump start massive new investments in non-polluting and non-oil using technologies for producing electricity. Solar, wind, geo-thermal and biomass -- these are the energy sources of the 21st century, not oil and natural gas from politically unstable regions.

The debate over changing our travel habits in the U.S. in response to the horrific hijackings cannot be limited to adapting new security precautions at the nation's overburdened airports. There were undoubtedly many ways the terrorists could have eluded our slapdash airport security precautions. Long lines of harried travelers brushing past the underpaid rent-a-guards at x-ray checkpoints pose almost no deterrence to the determined mass murderer.

Yet the outlook for the nation's airports in the coming decades promises even bigger crowds and longer lines. Moreover, as long as the current economics of the airline industry are in place -- with their thin operating margins in good times and massive losses in bad times -- improving the quality of airport security could prove very difficult to finance.

But there's a way around this dilemma. The nation should resolve now to end gridlock at its airports by eliminating all flights of up to 300 miles. How? By building a high-speed rail system in this country that will get people to their business and pleasure destinations just as fast, if not faster, and at less cost and with more comfort than current air travel.

A crash program now could have a modern, high-speed rail system in place in ten years that would largely eliminate the Washington-New York and New York-Boston shuttles; link the cities within Florida and Texas; hub-and-spoke the checkerboard-patterned cities of the Upper Midwest; run up and down the West Coast. It's a crash program that would create tens of thousands of new jobs in every section of the country.

Then, the airlines could adopt continental schedules that fill up their planes. Do competing airlines really need to send planes from Boston to Los Angeles every hour that are only one-third filled?

Businesses can adapt by altering their business schedules, and airlines can drop their ruinous competition for the limited trans-continental market. High-speed rail and full planes will mean less frequent aircraft departures and less crowded airports. That will give the airlines and airport authorities time to carry out the sophisticated and appropriate security measures that must be adapted in the wake of this week's terrorist assault. Those flights may cost more, but it's a small price to pay.

These are just some of the home front programs that the American people can unite behind now to combat terrorism within our borders. They're practical. They're high-tech. And they will give the economy a boost.

And most important, they will unite the home front in the war against terrorism in a way that doesn't sacrifice our basic freedoms.