On the Lack of a U.S. Energy Policy

My friend Larry Miles, whose breakthrough in wind turbines I prominently feature here on my list of clean energy investment opportunities (it’s #6), writes:

I was thinking about your piece on the sad state of the non-existent U.S. Energy Policy, I remembered the quote from Machiavelli (pictured).  Here it is, lifted from Wikipedia:

This quote from chapter six of The Prince on initiating change struck me, “We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders. This indifference arises in part from fear of their adversaries who were favoured by the existing laws, and partly from the incredulity of men who have no faith in anything new that is not the result of well-established experience. Hence it is that, whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.”

I am sure there are different translations of the original (in my 1975 Penguin Classics edition the section highlighted above reads “initiating changes in a state’s constitution), nevertheless I think it explains exactly why the U.S. does not have an energy policy. 

Lamentable as it sounds, I’m not so sure it is a bad thing to not have an energy policy.  As we both know, such a policy would be bought and paid for by those with the most money, as Dick Cheney clearly attempted to do.  Though it would be painful to many, although not taxpayers, eliminating all subsidies for energy investment, taxing undesirable things like carbon emissions (as Nixon apparently proposed), and perhaps not allowing established monopoly utility companies to impede change I think would be fine, and possibly achievable.