The Missing Strategy

I don't know whether to slit my wrist, puke, or be guardedly optimistic. Since, I can't do them all at once and my housekeeper is gone, I guess I'll do the last one. Any breathing, thinking humanoid with above convention room temperature IQ, and who is paying the least bit of attention to anything else besides the schlock a rama talking head dribble drone which oozes from the polished pores of our media outlets, often represented to be news and information, knows that Climate Change and Peak Oil are about to make our little time on this planet an extinction footnote to what the geological folks like to call a period, or at best an age.

So yesterday, we get this editorial from the NYT.

The Missing Energy Strategy
The New York Times
April 19, 2005

The House is moving quickly and with sad predictability toward approval of yet another energy bill heavily weighted in favor of the oil, gas and coal industries. In due course the Senate may give the country something better.

But unless Mr. Bush rapidly elevates the discussion, any bill that emerges from Congress is almost certain to fall short of the creative strategies needed to confront the two great energy-related issues of the age: the country's increasing dependency on imported oil, and global warming, which is caused chiefly by the very fuels the bill so generously subsidizes.

It closes with:

Changing the way this country produces and uses energy will require a determined national effort organized by the president, but Mr. Bush, so far, has been content to remain at the rear of a parade he ought to be leading. It will also require a far more adventurous approach from a Congress whose solicitude for special interests has greatly exceeded its concern for the national interest.

When I read that today, I thought, man, that's pretty mean.

Congress whose solicitude for special interests has greatly exceeded its concern for the national interest.

Now solicitude sounds worse than it is. The first definition is "concern and consideration, especially when expressed."

So Congress whose concern and consideration, especially when expressed for special interests has greatly exceeded its concern for the national interest.

That sounds to me like they should be fired.

Now, these words did not come from the Village Voice.

Nor did they come from some backwater publication that just doesn't understand the big picture.

The editorial even says its angry,

"What's maddening about this is that there is no shortage of ideas about what to do,"

The consensus on the need for a more stable energy future is matched by an emerging consensus on how to get there. In the last two years, there have been three major reports remarkable for their clarity and convergence, from the Energy Future Coalition, a group of officials from the Clinton and the first Bush administrations; the Rocky Mountain Institute, which concerns itself with energy efficiency; and, most recently, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a group of heavyweights from academia, business and labor.

I already have the press release for the POTUS ready to go.

He just needs to say the word.

I just need to change the date.

I once heard someone say not too long ago,

that humankind will generally make the right choice,

once all other alternatives have been exhausted.

Are we there yet?


Earthfamilyalpha Content


*