by hilzoy
Yesterday the House and Senate agreed on the final version of the energy bill, and today the House passed it. I gather that the energy bill contains some good provisions — I’m all for “new efficiency standards for commercial appliances from air conditioners to refrigerators”, for instance. And the conferees did manage to scrap a provision exempting makers of MTBE from liability. All in all, though, it’s a dreadful bill.
First, it does very little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. This would be hard to understand under any circumstances; now, however, when (I would have thought) the need to reduce our dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia is obvious, it’s downright irresponsible. And it’s not as though it’s hard to figure out what steps to take: the obvious starting-point is raising mileage standards on cars and eliminating the SUV loophole. But did our Congresspeople so much as consider this? No. (It didn’t help that the EPA decided to put off until after the bill’s passage the release of a report showing “that loopholes in American fuel economy regulations have allowed automakers to produce cars and trucks that are significantly less fuel-efficient, on average, than they were in the late 1980’s.”) And then there’s this: “A provision that had passed the Senate to require the president to find ways to reduce U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a year by 2025 was abandoned because of strong opposition from House Republicans and the administration.” Great.
Second, it doesn’t do much about global warming. It contains no caps or taxes on carbon emissions. The Senate version originally required that utilities derive 10% of their power from renewables, but that was stripped out in conference. On reflection, maybe I will buy property in Labrador or Greenland.
Third, it contains absolutely huge giveaways to energy companies. $14.5 billion, in fact. The New York Times writes:
“both houses conspired in some spectacular giveaways. One would ease environmental restrictions on oil and gas companies drilling on public lands. The other would shower billions in undeserved tax breaks on the same companies, even as they wallow in the windfall profits produced by $60-a-barrel oil.”
The Boston Globe:
“What is left is a candy store of tax breaks and subsidies for both the highly profitable oil and gas companies and the more struggling alternative energy producers. But the latter would do better if utilities were required to include renewables among their power sources or — best of all — if Congress were to tax or cap utilities’ emissions of carbon dioxide.”
I have never liked bills that give away my tax dollars to corporations that are making record profits without the government’s help. But I particularly don’t like them now, when our deficits have gone through the roof. The Bureau of the Public Debt’s web site informs me that as of today, the federal debt stands at $7,871,882,751,780.48: 7.8 trillion dollars plus. That’s a huge amount of money, and last year we had to spend 17% of government revenue just to pay the debt service on it. The last thing we need, under the circumstances, is another one of our Congress’s spectacular giveaways.
We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil: it’s a matter of national security. We need to start taking action on global warming immediately. And we need to stop acting as though we have infinite amounts of money to throw at wealthy contributors, whether or not that money will produce any actual policy results. Apparently, the Congress hasn’t figured this out yet. You have to wonder what it will take to clue them in: a collection agent paddling up to the entrance of the Senate (now conveniently located on the Maryland coastline), sweltering in the 125 degree heat, ready to repossess the Capitol building in the name of the People’s Republic of China?
thanks for the update! frightening how easily our congressmen/women sell us out. just fyi to your readers, you can notify your senators at nrdc.org if you want them to vote against the current energy bill.
Well, Washington being so heavily influenced by Texans doesn’t help. As a Texan, I apologize.
Some good news from Texas, three bills were put to votes in the state legislature…and all three lost. That is extremely remarkable, never good to bring bills to the floor when you are not sure about having the votes, but shows the desperate state of cannibalism this state has descended to.
You know I think American politics has achieved a world-historical condition of irrevocable corruption (I will be voting Green, or straight Lib for a while, just to throw my vote away) and needs a LaFollette or more extreme reform movement…much more extreme. None is in apparent nascence, so my only hope is that the vultures start attacking each other in the battle over this putrescent bloated corpse of a nation.
May the Texas State Constitution fall on you. And I mean that in a nice, although condescending, way.
hilzoy,
I think clueless is too kind a description. These are not naive mistakes.
What will it take to clue Congress in? I can’t think of a single thing other than having a few members eaten by wild dogs…
One of the most frightening things that I own is a letter from the Weimar Republic. It has seventeen million Reichmarks of postage on it. You hear all kinds of stuff about you-know-who’s rise to power, but when you hold something like that in your hand, you realize how desperate people can become. You or I would vote for people we ordinarily wouldn’t spit on if we got hungry enough.
I look at our deficit and wonder: is it just foolishness, or is there a Reconstructionist who’s willing to drive the country into the ditch so he can try to grab the wheel?
One of the most frightening things that I own is a letter from the Weimar Republic. It has seventeen million Reichmarks of postage on it. You hear all kinds of stuff about you-know-who’s rise to power, but when you hold something like that in your hand, you realize how desperate people can become. You or I would vote for people we ordinarily wouldn’t spit on if we got hungry enough.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier threads my grandparents were missionaries in China both before and after WWII. In the late 1930s, I think it was, China experienced hyperinflation on the order of Weimer. My grandmother used to tell a story about how one of the maids in their church fell afoul of this. She’d given the maid her monthly pay one morning and enjoined her to go out immediately and buy essentials (bread, rice, that sort of thing). The maid, who was something of a ditz, didn’t take my grandmother seriously and did something else first.
Between the time the maid got her paycheck in the morning and went to the market in the afternoon, the yuan had devalued.
Her entire month’s salary wasn’t enough to buy a loaf of bread.
Yeah, desperation and a half.
[IIRC, the maid came back in tears and my grandparents gave her some bartering implements like fishhooks so she was able to buy food for her family; but if my grandparents had been less generous or less “wealthy” — a ludicrous description in general but apt in the lunacy of hyperflation — she might well have starved.]
Hilzoy, Bernard Y. is absolutely right: this is not “cluelessness”; this is institutional corruption – moral corruption – on the broadest scale. That an “energy” bill whose main component is government givaways to the biggest of Big Energy corporations passes the House by a large margin is not, of itself, surprising (since Congress always acts in the interest of its true masters). What is shocking, though is the (apparent) lack of any sort of real, articulate opposition to this sort of irresponsible legislation. This latest is just typical of so many others which have been put through the Bush Congresses: Republican Congresscritter(s) draft(s) lobbyist-inspired, industry-friendly giveaway Bill; House Committee churns it a bit in obscurity; any opposition to said Bill is either crushed or ignored: and the first that the public (even blogoholics like myself) hears of it is a minor piece in the papers, or on some political blog: “House set to Pass Giveaway Bill”: by which time the passage of said act is merely a formality. And we, the public, have to live with consequences of the legislation for the foreseeable future.
No: this isn’t “clueless”: this is venal.
In the spirit of constructive criticism, here are some of the things I’d like to see in a serious energy bill:
(1) 1% of all ethanol subsidies go towards improving the energy efficiency of ethanol production (currently it takes as much energy from oil to produce a gallon of ethanol as the gallon of ethanol produces – i.e. zero net gain)
(2) Promote recycling of used cooking oil into biodiesel through tax breaks for participating companies. Given the right incentives MacDonalds would jump at the opportunity to generate some positive publicity, so the tax incentive would not need to cover the whole difference between the cost of setting up recyling and the value of the biodiesel. The objective would be to ease the startup costs of getting biodiesel infrastructure in place.
(3) Fund an aggressive program of research into low cost solar cells. Require 20% of all federal buildings (excluding the military) to have solar panels installed. This helps generate markets for existing manufacturers, driving down the cost of current technology solar arrays through economies of scale, and provides assistance with moving the technology further.
(4) Promote widespread adoption of hybrid cars through tax breaks for purchase of hybrids. Require hybrids to be 10% of all passenger vehicles purchased by the federal government, gradually rising to 50% within 7 years. This helps provide market guarantees for companies developing hybrids and so reduces risk, encouraging further development. In practice it might be better to require specific mileage targets rather than a specific technology so as to encourage innovation.
(5) Set up a system of prizes for the development of low impact energy technologies that do not depend on foreign suppliers. Prizes have been surprisingly effective at spurring innovation in the past. Certainly we can afford to put up some substantial prizes (~$100 million or more) given the importance of the problem. Prizes tend to produce much greater levels of investment than the amount of the prize, since there is promise of further profit down the line as the technology is commercialized.
(6) Begin a serious program to deal with the problem of nuclear waste. Include prizes and direct funding of research. Current waste disposal paradigms are both hysterical and stupid. Nuclear waste is an ore, not merely a poison. There is plenty of energy left locked up in spent nuclear fuel, and we should be able to figure out how to extract it. We should explore transmutation, fission-fusion hybrids, proliferation resistant fuel cycles, low waste fuel cycles, and more. Nukes hold a lot of promise, and we shouldn’t let fear get in way of sensible nuclear power policy.
You’re right; clueless was the wrong word. (I was kind of groping for something to say that didn’t violate posting rules.)
Andrew C: I’d add the obvious CAFE standard hikes and eliminating the SUV exemption, of course. Personally, I’d rather just eliminate SUVs, but I don’t think that’s feasible. — Last time I checked, though, one of the many little breaks that SUV owners get was this: insurance payments by many insurance companies are calculated on the basis of how likely you are to be injured or killed in an accident, not how likely someone is to be injured or killed in an accident you’re involved in, and this is (or was) true whether you took out insurance only for yourself or insurance that covered your own injuries and any injuries you caused. Since SUVs are only slightly safer for the driver than other cars, but hugely more dangerous for other people involved in a crash with an SUV, this amounted to hiding part of the cost of owning one, and passing it on to all other drivers. It would be nice if this and all other hidden SUV subsidies could be eliminated.
Andrew C.- I don’t think ethanol is a good choice, even if efficiency were improved.
Since the energy market has other players besides the U.S., you have to consider the availability of land and water for growing crops. Take someone like Brazil, the leading producer of ethanol. Is it a good trade-off if they have to cut down forests to increase production?
Another factor to consider is the world’s grain reserves. If the reserves are falling, and the U.S. accounts for half the world’s grain exports, a choice will have to be made. Grain to feed cars, or to feed people?
These are just a few points to ponder when deciding where to allocate our dollars.
“I don’t think ethanol is a good choice, even if efficiency were improved… Another factor to consider is the world’s grain reserves. If the reserves are falling, and the U.S. accounts for half the world’s grain exports, a choice will have to be made. Grain to feed cars, or to feed people?”
There are some developments occurring that have the potential to make ethanol more viable. Cheap enzymes that break cellulose down so that it can be used as feedstock… bacteria strains that perform the fermentation step much more efficiently than yeast… semi-permeable membranes that will pass ethanol efficiently enough that continuous stream, rather than batch processes become feasible. We don’t know whether these scale up or not, and more disturbingly, we aren’t spending much money to find out.
If you could dump, say, kudzu in one end of the processing plant and get ethanol out with a net energy gain, you could solve two problems at once :^)
Hilzoy – I was in a rush so I skipped some things like patching the SUV loophole and fixing CAFE standards. There are a bunch of other things we should try, too.
Happy Jack – Ethanol subsidies are almost impossible to kill. I figure we might as well figure out how to get something positive out of them other than slight improvements in urban smog. There will inevitably be unintended consequences, but that just means that we have to be careful in crafting solutions. Biomass is a very promising (and greenhouse-neutral) energy source. No matter what we do there will be negative consequences – we have to choose carefully what negatives we are willing to accept. Sensible policies will limit negative side efects.
Reducing our dependence on Saudi oil isn’t that helpful. We aren’t really that dependent on it now, the problem is that the rest of the world is very dependent on Saudi oil and that impacts the price of the oil we use. Reducing SUV use is nice, but the real bear is the transportation cost of shipping trucks. High oil prices make shipping more and more expensive for everything and that acts like friction on our economy. What we need is a generally applicable technology discovery which makes transportation without using oil much cheaper. Hybrid cars aren’t going to help much with the shipping problem either because you can’t make shipping significantly lighter and you need real power to move heavy objects.
For global warming purposes we need to either discover cold fusion or go much more nuclear than we have been willing to do so far for electrical production. Low cost solar isn’t going to do it unless you are willing to ruin the environment by sticking solar panels all over any uninhabited space. It will also be not that useful if there isn’t a major battery innovation to store the electricity. (Actually a major battery innovation would help a lot because it would make all of the intermitent electrical sources more useful–see especially wind power). It would also help with the car issue. Battery innovation would help a lot–but there have only been incremental and small advances in battery technology for longer than I’ve been alive.
I totally agree with not liking corporate welfare though. I don’t like government market manipulations to help big companies–if they need it to stay in business that probably means the government is being used to scquelch innovators.
What will it take to clue Congress in?
Perhaps its so obvious everyone has already taken it into account. It would seem to me that the best way to get the folks on the Hill to act in a manner that actually takes into account what is best for the country, the people, and the world at large would be to remove the influence that large private sector campaign donations create. Its a lot easier to put the screws to Exxon/Mobil when they cannot contribute any more money to your campaign than Sushi Taro.
I recognize that campaign reform this drastic is about as likely as me winning the lotto.
I’m making it my mission to vote against incumbents who are clueless, which is pretty much all of them. Perhaps you’ve heard Ric Keller’s recent silliness, which (hopefully) he’ll publicly correct soon. If not, well, maybe someone will put a candidate up who’s not completely loathesome will replace him.
I don’t think that’s going to accomplish much, but if enough people do it, maybe it will.
As far as energy dependency, global warming and pollution go, they share a single root cause, so solving the problem is conceptually simple. Implementation of a solution and actually getting people to agree to cooperate with the solution: not so simple. India tried it once and failed miserably.
Sebastian – I did a calculation a while back that showed you can provide for the energy needs of the whole country simply by roofing over the interstate highway system with solar cells. It’s not practical, but it does show that you don’t have to pave the midwest with solar panels to provide power. Alternatively, perhaps it shows that we have to many damn highways.
Cold fusion is a chimera – there are basic reasons it can’t work, and the careful experiments (as opposed to the Pons/Fleishman exp’t) show that it doesn’t. Hot fusion is really the only hope for fusion power. The new international collaborater (ITER) will probably produce net fusion power, but the cost will be very high, and there are a number of unresolved issues (neutron activation, wall power density, ashing, managing tritium inventory) that will have to be dealt with in order to make it economically viable. Current DOE plans call for fusion power on the grid by 2035, but that’s probably optimistic given the approach they are taking. I’d much prefer funding innovative small projects to explore the configuration space of magnetic and inertial confinement, followed by multiple scale up projects. The problem with international projects is that they are hostage to every election in every one of the participating countries, and the international relations aspect ends up dominating the science (see the space station for example). Even minor cost overruns on large projects can completely kill the smaller projects competing for the same funding. This happened with the space station and the superconducting supercollider, both of which seriously hurt the smaller, more innovative projects drawing on the same funding sources.
Full disclosure: (1) I am a scientist working in fusion, on a small innovative confinement concept. The project I work on will be one of the ones killed if ITER experiences cost overruns. It’s also a completely different approach to magnetic confinement, exploring an area of configuration space that has never been touched before. (2) I’m leaving fusion because I think the program is being driven off a cliff, in part by ITER and in part by ignoring competing technologies that show greater short term promise. Also the fact that the fusion community is paying insufficient attention to the problems associated with tritium inventory and neutron activation suggest to me that the first fusion plant on the grid will be the last for a very long time, as the public backlash develops when people realize that fusion isn’t clean power, but rather involves significant amounts of radiation. If we invest in making conventional nukes safe and reliable and learn how to deal with radioactive materials safely on a routine basis, then the backlash won’t happen. But – if we do that, we can generate all the power we need from conventional nukes.
Maybe Fidel will take ethanol subsidies with him when he dies.
Obviously I don’t know as much as Andrew, above, but I’ve always thought cold fusion was right up there with zero-point energy as something that’s completely unlikely to pan out. In order to make fusion occur, you’ve got to bring the nuclei close enough so that they fuse, and in order to do that you’ve got to somehow overcome the repulsive force between the positively charged nuclei. How we do that now is clobber them together in a brute-force way, mainly by making conditions favorable for an occasional collision, i.e. high temperature combined with sufficient plasma density. There are other ways that are being looked at, but all of those also involve slamming nuclei together at high speed, using various methods. Cold fusion simply cannot put the nuclei near enough to each other; it can’t even put them closer together than the diameter of their electron shells. Think of it as sort of an inverse escape-velocity problem: you need high enough velocities to achieve contact or near-contac, and the easiest way to get lots of high velocity collisions is through elevated temperature.
I think cold fusion funding ought to be completely scrapped. Sure, universities can do small-scale research on the topic, but large-scale government funding should be cut off at the knees. Ankles, if possible.
I did a college term paper on this very subject back in 1980 or so. Since it was an English class, I think the prof really didn’t appreciate the point. From what I can recall of my research, there are relatively clean fusion reactions, but those aren’t the ones we’re developing (because they require even higher temperatures and pressures to achieve a sustained fusion reaction). What we’re developing are (or were) relatively dirty reactions like lithium-boron fusion (IIRC), or similar reactions that either begin or end with radioactive products (or both), and generate a more intense neutron flux that tends to put gas pockets in the containment vessel, which in turn makes it brittle AND radioactive. From what I remember, the waste problem didn’t look to be as large as what you get from fission reactors, but it was definitely not negligible.
“I did a calculation a while back that showed you can provide for the energy needs of the whole country simply by roofing over the interstate highway system with solar cells.”
Did this deal with the fact that much of the energy will be produced at times it isn’t needed and thus wasted? One of the key problems with solar energy is getting electricity at the right time (hence my belief that battery technology innovations would be a great help in any plan to improve our energy efficiency). And I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you were totally right about cold fusion. My whole point is that any really good improvement is absolutely going to require the kind of technological breakthrough that we can’t be sure of.
The need for a storage medium kind of goes along with solar cells. None of this is free, though: it takes energy to make solar cells, and it takes (varying amounts, depending on the technology) doping agents, which in turn tend to generate nassty waste products. I think the idea of roofing houses and other buildings with solar cells (and possibly putting them on the south-facing sides of any given building) is a decent start. If I were to roof my house with solar shingles, for instance, I could probably sell power back to the city. I calculated the financial breakeven point for doing something like that, and it was more than a decade out.
Austin City Limits
I suppose I should be the one to quote Mark Twain’s “Gilded Age” or Molly Ivins, but I will let Billmon do it. He is funnier.
I suppose that the differences between myself and Billmon is that I consider the Democrats only marginally better, and that I have a horrible habit of holding the people (who are the ones actually receiving the pork) just a little responsible for the actions of their representatives.
The difference with any elected Democratic regime will be on social and foreign policy matters…I haven’t seen any decent economic initiatives out of Washington since the Nixon era, and don’t expect any from Hillary.
“remove the influence that large private sector campaign donations create”
Disapprove on 1st Amendment grounds, and on an intuition that money can’t be removed from politics. “Smaller government” doesn’t help, but only moves the corruption down the food-chain.
Redistricting reform. Give each Congressman competing constituencies that can’t all be simultaneously mollified.
Andrew,
Funny you should mention that, as I’ve heard this before (largely from researchers commenting online) that this “let’s put all of our multi-billion dollar research eggs in one ITER basket” seems completely the wrong course of action. It seems to me this a huge, major energy issue that next to no one talks about.
Sebastian – It was a back of the envelope calculation, so only good to about a factor of two or so. Simply an attempt to understand the magnitude of the issues. Storage is a big deal as you point out, and I think I’d have to add major power storage research to my list of proposed energy policies.
The huge, major energy issue is to a large degree due to the ever-increasing number of energy users in combination with finite, even dwindling, resources. Something’s gotta give. Here’s what I think: I think if the population issue isn’t addressed inside of the next couple of decades, we’re going to see large-scale war. I don’t think ZPG is going to do it, and we’re nowhere near ZPG. And it’s not just energy, it’s everything that humans use and throw away.
Sebastian,
Not batteries… flywheels! But actually this gives me an opportunity to make a critique of all energy policies are currently devised and dreamed up by us folks: too specific.
Batteries, fusion, solar, whatever – a good energy policy would not perscribe the actual technologies involved. Instead of having wind & solar research dollars, we should instead have 100% clean renewable energy research dollars, and if there’s something else out there being dreamed up, it can get funded. Same with doling out subsidies – why should solar get subsidies and not wind? What if I dam up the stream in my backyard and get some power?
As fun as it is to discuss all of our favorite pet energy projects, divorcing these preferences from energy policy would be a great help.
I think we should scrap the CAFE system. I think it creates weird distortions in the market and it encourages car companies to play games to stay just below the limit.
What I’d suggest is a more agressive gas guzzler tax. Apply it to all vehicles — trucks, SUVs, etc. — increase the MPG limits required to avoid it and raise the penalties. Combine that with a “gas sipper” rebate program with direct subsidies (no waiting for the income tax check) from the fed for buying vehicles with good mileage.
Combine that with a hike in the gas tax and the car companies will fall all over each other to build the high efficiency vehicles that people will demand. Some people will still buy Hummers, especially if money is no object, but the Hummer driver will be helping several poorer people to buy a Prius.
I’d like to throw in a word about hybrids too. I don’t think the government should decide what type of technology people should use. A 50MPG car should get the same subsidy whether is uses hybrid electic or advanced diesel or a dozen hamsters used as acceleration assistance. The goevenment should be agnostic as for as technology goes. It should only be concerned about outcomes.
Chuchundra,
Then why a gas guzzling tax either? Seems easier to get rid of that, and CAFE standards, and just increase the gasoline tax per gallon. Same difference, right?
It’s a valid point, but I think…not quite.
Consumption taxes are regressive. If we dial up the gas tax enough to seriously deter people with the means to drop $35K or more on a new vehicle then the amount of pain imposed upon people for whom even a fifty cent increase in the gas tax would be a hardship would be unbearable.
That’s why I like the idea of a “gas sipper” subsidy to offset the pain of a gas tax increase. Although the CAFE standards already function as a sort of de facto subsidy of fuel efficient cars since a car company needs to sell several econoboxes to offset selling one luxotank, the price of the econobox is lowered to ensure that enough are sold.
By the way, here’s the schedule for the guzzler tax. In my opinion, simply doubling this tax an applying it to all vehicles sold in the US would go a long way to reducing energy usage in the medium term.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/info.shtml#guzzler
One of the few things I curse Reagan’s name over is his obliviousness to energy effeciency. Remember when he canned the tax credit for home insulation? How many millions of barrels of oil has that clever idea wasted by now?
Arguing over CAFE standards can be entertaining, but not terribly useful. Given global demand versus the reserves in the ground, oil at $200/bl is not that far off. Any kind of major crisis in the Persian Gulf could change the timescale from years to days. Either way, I suspect a measureable portion of the American automobile fleet may be rendered useless long before it wears out.
But the car situation will take care of itself, one way or another. I’m more worried, from a survival and social-order perspective, about food distribution and the power grid. We have a much larger percentage of our population living far away from where their food is grown and in climate zones/housing that mandate air conditioning.
Policy prescriptions? We should be encouraging renewable-resource generation, especially on a local level, mandating more efficient new construction (no lawns in Phoenix!), and at least try to figure out how to electrify the railroads. Europe does it; it can’t be impossible.
Trouble is, at this level of consumption there just aren’t enough renewable resources to make a difference. There’s always the sun, but we’re a ways from tapping that as even a fraction of our energy budget, and the amount of infrastructure to achieve something like a reasonable fraction isn’t exactly negligible. Far from it, if you do the math.
Disapprove on 1st Amendment grounds, and on an intuition that money can’t be removed from politics. “Smaller government” doesn’t help, but only moves the corruption down the food-chain.
Fair enough. I agree that money cant be removed from politics.
So its totally ok that a large defense contractor can contribute a significant amount of money to Rep. Tom Davis’ (R VA) campaign with the idea that Davis will then take the contractors concerns about a specific acquisition reform bill into account when the Government Reform Committee discusses the topic.
Yet, the same large defense contractor cannot give the contracting officer managing a large DoD RFP two tickets to the redskins dallas game, take the CO out for dinner and drinks and give the CO’s daughter a nice job?
Both situations may influence decisions. Shouldn’t the 1st Amendment afford the private sector the same kind of access in both cases?
toby, I’d be just tickled if the law forbade corporate political contributions. The money=speech argument seems to have some support, though, so I’d prefer to see the law forbid candidates from taking money from corporations.
I have no idea how practical that notion is, though, or the legalities.
I’ll just briefly propose my hobbyhorse crackpot scheme that would eliminate most contracting shenanigans – pass a law that the Government will not do business with corporations that have donated money to serving politicians. Extend that to all corporate officers and major shareholders, and I’d say you’ve taken most of the corruption off the table, at least as far as contracts are concerned. Plus, no First Amendment issues!
Slartibartfast:
I agree that at our current level of consumption renewables are a drop in the bucket. At some point in the future, we are probably going to be using less energy, like it or not, as the result of depletion, economics, or catastrophe. (I will not daydream about fusion.)
The thing is, most of us could get by on much less than half the energy we currently use, especially if we stopped driving vehicles the size of Soviet apartments. What I want us to do is to have enough hydro, wind, solar, nuclear, etc. available when fossil fuel prices go non-linear that we are able to keep the lights on in hospitals, that we can still make medicine, harvest food and deliver it, instead of making the transition from superpower to third-world hellhole in the time it takes to burn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
I like microwaves and computers and TVs and jetskis and all that crap as much as any other American, but those are all toys. I would really like to have confidence that this country could get by if things go all pear-shaped. But there are so many people who seem to feel that $1.89 super unleaded is something they have a right to.