In a Sunday op-ed in the New York Times, comedian/economist/writer Ben Stein says the solution to the US energy crisis is drilling for more oil and turning coal into gasoline.
So, what to do? First, we do not kill the geese — the big oil companies — that lay the golden eggs. We encourage them and cheer them on to get more oil. They need incentives, not hammer blows.
BUT most of all, we treat this as a true crisis. As my pal Glenn Beck, the conservative commentator, says, we need a new moon-shot mentality here. We need to turn coal into oil into gasoline, to use nuclear power wherever we can, and to brush aside the concerns of the beautiful people who live on coastal pastures (like me). And we need to drill on the continental shelf, even near where movie stars live. This must be done, on an emergency basis. If we keep acting as if the landscape were more important than human life, we will make ourselves the serfs of the oil producers and eventually reduce our country to poverty and anarchy.
Environmentalists say Stein's view misses the point. In a two-partmemo to the former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, Treehugger.com says inefficient energy production and the high costs of heating and cooling buildings are responsible for the current crisis.
"As an economist, one might have thought that he would be familiar with the concept of "externalities"- the carbon dioxide and pollution all of that drilling and gasifying," writes Lloyd Alter in memo No. 1: It's the Efficiency, Stupid. "Might we suggest Ben have a look at efficiency- the extraordinary amount of energy that is wasted simply because we transform our energy sources into useful work so badly because it was so cheap. There is more energy to be found here than in all the continental shelves and shale oil fields in all the world."
The second memo contains graphics showing that buildings consume nearly half of all US energy and three quarters of the country's electricity use.
"We don't have an energy problem, we have a waste problem, as we throw our energy away in buildings that need too much cooling, too much heating and too much artificial lighting," Alter writes.
"Do we need to spend billions on liquid coal, nukes and drill everywhere just so Ben can keep driving his Cadillac STS-V at 130 MPH to Rancho Mirage? No, we just have to fix our buildings and as your fellow NYT columnist Paul Krugman said, 'own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.'"
Regarding current skyrocketing gas prices, Stein wrote that he believes the market is currently experiencing a bubble that will eventually burst. He emphasized these views in a CBS commentary Sunday morning as well, when he said there is absolutely nothing lawmakers can do to bring down prices in the short term.
In a Sunday