Bush's Energy Plan: Running on Empty
By: Lowell
Published On: 2/1/2006 2:00:00 AM
I don't have time now to do a serious critique of the "plan" Bush outlined last night to free America from its oil "addiction." Perhaps that's a good thing, because frankly Bush's energy proposals were so pathetic as to barely warrant a response. I mean, get real: we are "addicted" to oil from countries that send terrorists to crash planes into our buildings, and all Bush has to offer is a few MILLION dollars (not "BILLIONS" or even "HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS," as is needed) more for research, mainly on technologies that are unproven (hydrogen cars), highly questionable (carbon sequestration), and many years away at best (cellulosic ethanol). All this, when what we need right now is a huge increase in automobile fuel economy (CAFE) standards, a huge push for hybrids - a technology that's here RIGHT NOW (!), and a massive effort with the same urgency as JFK's Apollo Program to get us off of Middle Eastern oil ASAP.
But we see none of that in Bush's weak, pathetic, miserable failure of an "energy plan." As Steven Pearlstein wrote in today's Washington Post:
...does anyone really believe that a president and vice president who became wealthy from their association with the oil and gas industry, who never failed to tout the industry line and who presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from consumers to industry in the history of mankind -- that these same leaders will move us beyond a "petroleum-based economy" to one based on "wood chips, stalks or switch grass"?
If you believe that, I've got some nice swamp land in southern Iraq to sell you. Unfortunately, Bush's energy "plan" - like the rest of his pathetic Presidency - is running on empty. And America needs a refill, badly.
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