WHEN BOB HOPE, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour took "The Road to Bali," they left from Australia. Over 50 years later Kevin Rudd, Australia's newly elected prime minister, headed to Bali for a more serious purpose: to sign the Kyoto protocol, to the cheers of the assembled 15,000--or is it 20,000--ministers, advocacy groups, journalists, and suntan-hunting politicians meeting on the Indonesian island to plan future assaults on greenhouse gases. That, along with Al Gore's angry attacks on America--no one can hate his country as much as a politician rejected by it, as Jimmy Carter has proved--provided the momentum for a combination of America-bashing and position-trading that resulted in a new roadmap. This one is designed to take its followers to, well, another meeting, this one in 2009. There, negotiations will start in earnest for a replacement of the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
"Color them green," warbled Barbra Streisand. That was in 1963, and she was singing about her envious eyes. But flash forward to today and those words would equally apply to the myriad players in the let's-make-environmental-and-energy-policy game. We are all green now. The green wave is rolling, and has drowned those who doubt whether the earth is really warming, and question the role of human activity in any warming that might be occurring.
The physical science question having been resolved to the satisfaction of the greens, the question now becomes just what to do. Here we find strange bedfellows: oil producers and environmentalists.
The OPEC oil cartel, which
recently met in Abu Dhabi, and the Bali conferees might not know it, but they have a common goal: high oil prices. The producers want to keep crude oil prices high so that the massive shift in wealth from consuming countries to their sovereign wealth funds continues.
The greens favor high oil prices because consumers use less of the stuff when it costs more, and because high prices for oil make other forms of energy more competitive in the market place. Nuclear power, solar energy, wind power or any of the other substitutes for fossil fuels can become more economically viable only if oil prices stay about where they are--and politicians stump up some generous subsidies, skeptics would add.
Meanwhile, the hunt for the proverbial free lunch is on. The most efficient way to cut down on the use of fossil fuels is to make then more expensive by taxing them, or the emissions they create. But politicians are unenthusiastic about transparency in the cost of cleaning up the environment. So most proposals to cut carbon emissions are built around a single proposition: hide their cost from the voters.
Motor vehicles always come in for special attention. Congress would require auto companies to increase the fuel efficiency of their fleets, but fail to mention that the cost will be reflected in the price of cars and the higher death toll associated with lighter vehicles. Politicians with their eyes on Iowa's voters--in this as in so many other matters John McCain stands apart, and speaks truth to hostile audiences--want to mandate major increases in the use of ethanol, but do not mention that current mandates have already driven up the price of corn and wheat, and of meat and poultry, by making animal feed more expensive. Consumers of electricity will also pay for cooling the world if utilities are required to obtain more of their electricity from expensive renewable sources and nuclear power. And new taxes on oil producers, a favorite of Nancy Pelosi & Company, will certainly drive up prices for gasoline and heating oil.
|
