Energy & Environment

The economic environment in America today is more dire than most of us have ever known. We are in the midst of an unemployment emergency, in essence a jobless recovery: notwithstanding recent marginal upticks in official U.S. jobs numbers, there will be no fundamental improvement in the unemployment picture unless major new national economic strategy initiatives are taken. Who will step up to drive them forward?

Less than two years ago, Iraq launched one of the largest oil field auctions in the history of the petroleum industry. Amid red carpets and television cameras, top executives from the world's major energy giants - from Beijing to Houston, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur - flew to Baghdad to take their seats at the live event, hoping to win a concession. On offer were some of the richest and potentially most fertile fields in the world, in a country that could one day emerge as the largest reserves holder in the world.

For 30 years, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been more lethargic than strategic. Its roughly 700 million barrels of oil have sat in their salt caverns on the Gulf Coast, not doing anything more ambitious than providing a feeling of security.

Among the most important high-tech endeavors at Shanghai Jiaotong University -- widely considered to be China's No. 2 engineering school -- is a cavernous showroom that resembles nothing so much as a futuristic Home Depot.

Seven years ago, China’s grassroots environmental activists won arguably their most remarkable victory. After a nationally coordinated, media-savvy anti-dam campaign, Premier Wen Jiabao responded in April 2004 by personally stepping in to suspend plans to dam China’s last free-flowing river, the Nujiang. With a nod to concerns that Chinese environmentalists had raised about the dam’s impact on local ecosystems, Wen asked that the plans be “seriously reviewed and decided scientifically.”

Four years ago, you wouldn’t be asking this question. Romney’s position would have been nothing out of the ordinary, and the “facts” of climate change were well understood and agreed upon by both parties. Today, the facts haven’t changed, but the Republican party has — with increasing numbers of leaders claiming climate change is a “hoax.”

Due to high gas prices, many small businesses have had to lay off workers, cut back their hours, and suspend hiring practices. "The cost of fuel may literally displace some workers, but it has an even bigger psychological effect, creating an air of uncertainty that discourages job creation," explains New America's Lisa Margonelli in TheAtlantic.com.
 

Are we living at the beginning of the Age of Fossil Fuels, not its final decades? The very thought goes against everything that politicians and the educated public have been taught to believe in the past generation. According to the conventional wisdom, the U.S. and other industrial nations must undertake a rapid and expensive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy for three reasons: The imminent depletion of fossil fuels, national security and the danger of global warming.

In his thoughtful criticism of my essay on the future of fossil fuels and the poor prospects for renewable energy, Andrew Leonard characterizes my message as one that "we have nothing to worry about." This may be partly the fault of my presentation, because in the course of being provocative I did not make it sufficiently clear that I was engaged in analysis, not advocacy.

A growing number of Americans are cutting back on nonessential spending due to high gasoline prices. A recent Bankrate poll  found that 63% of Americans are cutting back--72% of whom are from households with incomes less than $50,000 and 66% are retirees and those living in rural communities.