Criteria for good energy policy...

Today’s post: Weds, 6-18-2008

In his book, The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker listed several key ways the effective executives he’d met used to be so effective.

Three that relate well to energy policy are:

1. Focus on Contribution What is the most useful & valuable purpose of my efforts? And, how can I best contribute to achieving that purpose?

2. Refuse to be limited or stalled by what you cannot do. Find the most promising things you CAN do & do as many of those as you can.

3. When you make a major decision, think through in advance what criteria or characteristics an ideal decision would need to have. He called these criteria boundary conditions.

In energy policy here are some of what I see as being these boundary conditions or criteria for energy policy for the United States.

a) Will the decision prevent severe economic problems in the short run?

b) Will the decision prevent severe economic problems in the near future & far future?

c) Will it help us or hinder us in lowering CO2 emissions in time to prevent the foreseeable huge problems not doing so will cause?

d) Will it help us or hinder us in removing & ending our over-dependence on oil and coal as energy sources?

e) Will it serve as a good example to other countries in the world in reaching these objectives?

f) Will the technologies, products, & services – and businesses developed be helpful to countries in the world in reaching these objectives?

g) Will it make the United States self sufficient in its energy supplies and end our dangerous over-dependence on energy sources elsewhere in the world?

If you have been paying attention to the news & want an energy policy that does a good job, I think you’ll agree that these are the right boundary conditions.

The bad news is that the only one of these the outgoing Bush administration has done a good job on is the first one.

They have done some work on the others here and there. But so little that it’s clear these are not priorities for them.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Republicans in our congress & their Presidential nominee, John McCain, seem to be only focused on the first one & the last one.

I’d be just as happy to support Republicans as I would Democrats who would make ALL of these priorities. I am registered as a Republican largely because I am pro business. And, I even campaigned for a Republican not long ago who would support ALL of these boundary conditions & understood why that’s necessary.

But most of today’s Republicans now in office are stuck in the outmoded thinking of the outgoing Bush administration.

In my view, we court economic disaster & devastation of the security of the United States if we keep these people in office.

We simply no longer can afford such incomplete & dangerous energy policies.

To be specific, this group has suggested much more domestic oil production by drilling in coastal areas & in Alaska that are now off limits to drilling for oil. They also have voted against taxing oil companies who decline to invest some of their large, current profits in transitioning to renewable energy sources in part because it would take funds & management attention away from extracting more oil from within the United States.

They have proposed efforts to burn coal more safely with far less CO2 release & large increases in nuclear power plants.

To be sure these would increase our domestic energy production & help to slow down the near term rise in fuel prices which looks like it would be of some help in protecting our economy in the short run and would lessen our dependence on energy supplies for a while.

Although it is very difficult to do with sufficient safety and is thus very, very expensive to do well enough to be safe to use, more nuclear power may well serve most of these boundary conditions. As I recently posted on, doing this is a good bit more doable than most people realize. And, energy-wise it would generate a lot more energy than it would cost to build in the amount of energy used to do it.

In addition, we now use so much coal that it’s clear we do need a way to reduce the CO2 released by coal burning power plants while we transition to other sources.

The two pieces of bad news are that their emphasis on drilling for more domestic oil and NOT having any significant emphasis on energy efficiency or dramatic increases in renewable energy generation are totally wrong policies.

As just one example, if we obtain more domestic oil by drilling in places now off limits, the world supply of oil will at least temporarily go up. More will be burned & more CO2 will be released. And, it will make it look as if it’s economically safe to ignore the pressing need to address these other issues.

This would generate MORE CO2 when it’s extremely important to use less. And it tends to postpone action on other ways to protect the economy short term that help us speed the transition to renewable sources that do not do this

If we must insist that all these boundary conditions be met -- and I think it’s clear we must, then this policy is not just wrong, it’s incompetent.

I’d love to have Republicans who understand these issues. And, as I’ve said I campaigned for one, precisely because he did.

But the current crop of them does not & seemingly will not.

Unfortunately, at this time, that looks as if it includes John McCain.

There is no guarantee that Barack Obama will be able to solve these problems as they are very challenging indeed. But he has a chance. He hasn’t run on his energy policies as well as I think he could & should have. But it’s clear he does know we need decisions that meet all these criteria.

But, I think John McCain is looking like his policies would be sure to prevent him from doing much better than George Bush who has done far too little, too late.

To me that makes McCain look like a very bad choice on the most important set of issues today.