Barack Obama is making energy policy by using existing laws in ways that were never intended. His predecessors had all asked Congress to give them the policy they wanted; Obama has decided to go around Congress rather than through it.
But what if that had been the norm with respect to energy policy, if all presidents made energy policy that way? Here’s a glimpse of what the last 45 years would have looked like:
Richard Nixon would have started us on a crash program to have nuclear power plants that generated more plutonium than they used up in producing electricity. The so-called “breeder” reactor was an untested, potentially dangerous technology that couldn’t have solved our energy problems even if the program had been adopted. It would also have meant tons of plutonium, the element most easily turned into an atomic bomb, would have been traveling around the country daily.
Jimmy Carter, however, would have reversed Nixon’s breeder venture the moment he entered office. Instead, he would have seen to it that all power plants that burned oil or natural gas were retooled to burn only coal. According to Carter we were rapidly running out of both oil and gas and the sooner we switched to domestic coal the better. Later, he would have imposed a program to turn more coal into liquid or gaseous fuels, to create “synfuels.”
It’s ironic that to the extent that climate change is due to humans adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, Republican Nixon’s program would have been beneficial while Democrat Carter’s a disaster. Carter would have done one positive thing: He would have removed the oil and gas price controls (Nixon had imposed) a goal that was finally accomplished by his successor, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, who believed the nuclear power industry had been treated unfairly, would not only have pushed more nuclear power stations on the U.S., he would also have revived the breeder reactor program (as he in fact asked Congress to do). He would have done this despite the fact that his own director of the Office of Management and Budget had once called opposition to the breeder a “test of whether as Republicans we consistently adhere to … free market views on energy policy.” Reagan would have taken one other constructive action: He’d have abolished the Department of Energy.
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both presided over a time when oil prices were generally falling. Bush did face an oil price spike in 1990 and wanted to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drillers in response. But had he done so by the Obama method of executive orders and free-form interpretation of laws on the books, his successor, Bill Clinton, would have likely reversed the decision.
Clinton would probably not have done much in the way of imposing energy policy — except for pushing the 80-miles-per-gallon “supercar” idea, which was in fact funded but got nowhere. In general, Clinton deemphasized energy during his term in office.
George W. Bush, on the other, would have ramped up the hydrogen fuel cell-powered “freedom” car program. Given how many technological hurdles such a car entailed, it would probably have been known as the “car to nowhere.” In any case, by 2005, he would have dropped the hydrogen car for one fueled by ethanol, when that became his energy fixation. Unfortunately, his successor was as committed to it as he was and we still have the ethanol boondoggle.
Which brings us back to Barack Obama. Today, we have, through a creative interpretation of the Clean Air Act, an effort to close coal-fired power plants and replace them with “clean” solar and wind. As countries such as Germany have demonstrated, such a program is tremendously costly — costs that fall most heavily on the poor. The power is unreliable and it causes real problems for grid operators to keep power flowing.
But then the past 45 years should have taught us that presidents do not have a clear understanding of what their pet energy ideas could accomplish, or what havoc they could cause. Indeed, for the most part, our presidents haven’t understood the geology, the technology or the economics of what they touted. They just were captivated by one or another energy idea that in hindsight was shown to be bad.
Instead of understanding, we have a president who wants to show us not only how much he knows about energy but also how much he “gets” the climate change-energy connection. But like his predecessors, he has no technical knowledge, no scientific appreciation, no economic understanding of energy. He just believes he holds the key to America’s — heck, the world’s — energy future.
Just like Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and the rest.
Peter Z. Grossman is the author of U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure (Cambridge 2013) and a professor of economics at Butler University (Indianapolis). Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
