WASHINGTON - 01.22.02 | In a speech today sponsored by the Center for National Policy, Senator John F. Kerry (D-MA) offered an alternative vision for America's energy security:
"As we have turned the corner of a millennium and century, we have urgent reasons to be serious about our energy future -- and we have an extraordinary opportunity today to begin a new era in which our conception of how energy is produced, used and conserved is transformed.
"Common sense tells us that the policies that made us dependent on foreign oil -- however repackaged in the mantle of patriotism -- will only keep us dependent on foreign oil. If we enact the entire Bush energy plan we will find ourselves twenty years from now more dependent on foreign oil than we are today. The Administration has not offered an agenda for energy independence. It has offered an agenda that evades the tough questions -- provided blinders where we need magnifying glasses -- and slogans in the place of genuine leadership.
"The Administration sees a world where our principal effort is to drill our way out of our problem while alternative, renewable fuels and technologies rise or fall on their own at the margins no matter what compelling reasons exist to behave differently. I see a world, where even as we drill because it makes economic sense and we have to, our primary focus shifts to cajoling and exciting a new market place for those alternative and renewable energy sources because there are compelling reasons to do so.
"Energy security is American security. Our policy must reflect that we live in one world, not four or five separate ones and we need an energy policy of national purpose that confronts the hard realities and sets real priorities based on the needs of all Americans. There is no question that if we remain complacent one day those dangers will force us to act. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to acknowledge and address them now, while we can still maximize the benefits.
"And the most responsible thing we can do is to tap America's strength's, our markets, our ingenuity, our invention, our innovation and, most importantly, our values to control our destiny and begin a long evolution to an energy world that benefits our security, our economy and our environment."
In the speech, Kerry advocates a Strategic Energy Initiative that will deliver real energy security by initiating a transition in America from our heavy dependence on polluting and insecure fossil fuels to more efficient, clean, domestic and reliable energy. The plan calls for establishing targets and providing incentives, maximizes private sector opportunities and avoids the mistake of command and control. Kerry called for a national goal of producing 20 percent of our electricity from renewable energy by 2020; raising standards and providing tax incentives for fuel efficient cars and trucks; raising standards and providing tax incentives for efficient homes and businesses; investing in public transportation; setting a national goal for the production of domestic biofuels; and investing in the development of fuel cell technologies.
Senator Kerry has been a leading opponent of proposals to destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, arguing that drilling in ANWR will not reduce dependence on foreign oil. Later this week, Kerry will chair hearings this week in the Senate Commerce Committee on fuel efficiency standards.
Since September 11, we have all been united in a mission to confront and defeat the terrorists who attacked our country and those who knowingly harbored them. That is a noble and necessary mission that we must pursue with determination and success. We appreciate the President's leadership and the enormous contributions of our men and women in uniform. As a citizen, I have been grateful for our nation's response. We have come together as one country, across every boundary of party and background, calling and status, and to strengthen measures for homeland defense.
We have to win this struggle: militarily where that is necessary; through effective law enforcement where that is appropriate; and through vigorous diplomacy wherever that is required to keep the anti-terror coalition together.
And we must also strive with friends and scholars on every continent to expose, rebut, isolate and defeat the apostles of hate, so that children are no longer brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers, and terrorists are denied the ideological swamplands in which they breed.
September 11 obviously did much to affect our lives here in America. But it did not change everything. It did not diminish our identity as a tolerant and diverse people, or our commitment to freedom, or our willingness to meet our responsibilities to allies abroad. It did not change our nature, as one nation under God, a country where church and state are separate, but whose communities are blessed with an abundance of spiritual faith.
And it did not change our fundamental character as a democracy, where public policies are settled in open debate, in stark contrast to the narrow, autocratic regimes whose failure of governance has contributed to the terrorism we face today.
It is in the spirit of what is best about our country that this morning I share thoughts and proposals about our future. Politics -- as so many of you know -- is the art of achieving the possible in the conduct of public affairs. Sometimes that can be done by plucking the so-called low-hanging fruit and sometimes it requires painstaking, creative and bold, hard work in the vineyards. The challenge of delivering America's -- indeed the world's -- energy security offers both "low hanging fruit" and great challenge -- but it requires above all that we end the procrastination, and commit ourselves to get the job done. It requires leadership, vision, and action.
In times past, whenever we faced an energy crisis, talk would surface of America's need to be energy independent. For a moment we scurried around looking for new strategies and then, as the price of oil receded or as supplies increased or a war was put behind us -- as life returned to normal -- the sense of urgency evaporated. For almost 30 years this pattern allowed us to turn our backs on realities and possibilities. Alternatives, renewables, efficiencies, clean technologies, global warming, clean air, have met with only occasional, marginal success -- and more often with disdain -- so that essentially, America has operated without an energy strategy. We have squandered years during which we could have created hundreds of thousands if not several million new jobs, opened up whole new market opportunities, contributed significantly to global environmental efforts, improved the health of our citizens, saved the taxpayers money, and significantly enhanced the long term security of our country.
So it is important now to begin a new debate about our energy future -- a debate that must be grounded in certain key principles. First: absent a showing of exhaustion of all other remedies and a compelling real and present life threatening danger -- we should not do anything that does not make economic sense. Second -- subject to the same caveat -- we do not have to give up or diminish any quality of life we currently enjoy. Third, all things being equal, the easiest and most rapid gains will come from efficiencies in the current energy regime. And fourth, absent unpredictable breakthroughs, we must enter this debate understanding that for 30-50 years in the future, like it or not, we will continue to have major dependency on fossil fuels. What makes this current dependency particularly compelling is that not far beyond this time frame or window of opportunity -- in the lifetimes perhaps of our grandchildren -- scientists believe literally catastrophic consequences from global warming will occur in the absence of serious emission reductions.
So as we have turned the corner of a millenium and century, we have urgent reasons to be serious about our energy future -- and we have an extraordinary opportunity today to begin a new era in which our conception of how energy is produced, used and conserved is transformed.
The strategy I suggest to make that transition -- I regret to say -- must differ in many respects from that put forward by the current Administration, and by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Their approach was developed during the first half of last year by a Task Force chaired by Vice President Cheney. Neither innovative private sector companies nor the public interest were permitted to compete fairly and openly for the White House ear.
Old thinking passed through the doors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue far more often and easily than new thinking. Exxon Mobil, Enron or Chevron enjoyed an access bonanza at the expense of consumers and state of the art environmental technology manufacturers. The process and its results stand as a monument to the difficulty of forcing industry and institutional change.
As a result, those most heavily invested in the current energy system have set a course for the future which, not surprisingly, champions status quo policies at the expense of new ideas and innovation. What's worse, President Bush claims that prolonging the status quo will somehow ensure "energy independence" for America, and his party's leaders happily echo his cry -- as if by embracing their lack of vision we'd all be able to sit back, relax, and put our fleet of international oil tankers in drydock.
