We Won't Have a Sane Energy Policy Next Week, But That Doesn't Mean We Should Stop Demanding One

Here’s one of dozens of articles that purports to advise U.S. President Obama on energy, essentially encouraging the development of fossil fuels as well as renewables.  To me, this makes sense if your sole concern is economic growth and you discount the environmental and health consequences of our energy policy — or lack thereof.

I’m reminded of something excellent I heard at yesterday’s Renewable Energy Policy Forum from Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), which I paraphrase:

Sorry I was late; I chair a committee on budget, and I had to be present for an important vote on the debt ceiling.  I’m up to my eyeballs in the realities of what can and what cannot get done in Congress anytime soon. Everyone in this room should be happy that we are making some level of progress in clean energy.  But I want to warn you all that you face a certain level of frustration.  Most of you, I would guess, would like to see the externalities of fossil fuels priced in, and you’d like to see a federal energy policy that moves us in a sane direction vis-a-vis climate change and all these other issues.  It won’t happen this year. 

But DO NOT stop demanding it!   It WILL happen eventually, and, when it does, it will be because people like you never stopped insisting on it.  Let your voice be heard now, next week, next year, and forever, until the U.S. produces a sane approach to energy.

Van Hollen makes a terrific excellent point. Remember the white people who sat down with a black woman at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Mississippi in 1963?  They sat there calmly, talking about the weather, while the locals poured coffee, mustard, and honey all over them.  Did they expect racial segregation to end that afternoon?  Hardly.