by CKR
I watched President Bush’s news conference last night having believed the pre-conference hype that it would be about energy. It wasn’t; it was about social security and taking the spotlight off Tom DeLay and supporting his guy John Bolton and distancing himself from the religious nuts in Congress.
Bush started out by feeling the pain of everyone who is paying more for gasoline. But, he said, little can be done in the near term to bring those prices down except to ask the oil producers to produce more. Presumably he did that the other day and got not much of an answer, because he didn’t share it with us.
He rattled off four points to legitimize the pre-conference hype:
First, we must better use technology to become better conservers of energy.And secondly, we must find innovative and environmentally sensitive ways to make the most of our existing energy resources, including oil, natural gas, coal and safe, clean nuclear power.
Third, we must develop promising new sources of energy, such as hydrogen, ethanol or bio-diesel.
Fourth, we must help growing energy consumers overseas, like China and India, apply new technologies to use energy more efficiently and reduce global demand of fossil fuels.
He then urged Congress to pass his energy bill and hurried on to the real topics. There was only one question on energy.
Michael O’Hare has given some of the basics relating to what Bush said (via Matthew Yglisias). I don’t entirely agree with him, but I’ll let that go and add a few things.
The United States will never be energy independent unless it builds a heck of a lot of breeder reactors and goes into the reprocessing business. We tried energy independence in the 1950s, and it resulted in a drain-America-first oil policy. Most of our oil is gone, unless a miracle happens and ANWR produces much, much more than is projected.
It was encouraging that Bush mentioned conservation at all. However, there were no specifics (nor were there on any other point), and it’s hard to see him supporting lower CAFE gas mileage any time soon.
He referred to hydrogen, yet again, as a source of energy. It’s not. It’s an energy transfer medium that will require much more combustion or electrical energy than it will produce. O’Hare discusses this well.
Bush commented that the US hasn’t had an energy policy for a long time, as though that were someone else’s fault. No mention that for the last four years. Also no mention that the energy bill he wants passed has no pretensions to the kind of coherent policy he asked for.
Finally, a small point, but, as a scientist, I have to mention this.
One of the great sources of energy for the future is liquefied natural gas. There's a lot of gas reserves around the world. Gas can only be transported by ship, though, when you liquefy it, when you put it in solid form.
I realize it’s a long time since George’s high school chemistry or physics, but liquefaction doesn’t put anything in solid form.
Even David Brooks, in the post-conference commentary, called Bush’s statement on energy “trumped up.”