The sad truth is that energy has rarely been an electoral issue, and so it hasn’t paid for politicians to learn about the intricacies of our energy policy. The silver lining though is that as energy prices rise and the environmental consequences of our energy inefficiency become ever-more apparent, this is becoming an electoral issue. So I am cautiously optimistic.

And while elected officials are a bit slow to come around, we are seeing some pretty competent congressional staff nowadays. Keep an eye especially on Rep. Dingell, Sen. Kerry, Rep. Markey and Sen. Bingaman. They’ve assembled some pretty crackerjack energy teams and are headed in the right direction.

Sean

It’s a great question, although I’m not sure I’d frame it precisely that way.

We have three decades of regulation that have started from the presumption that environmental gain must come at the expense of economic loss (and vice versa). We didn’t have to frame the regulation this way, but we did. (Witness the Clean Air Act, which mandates environmental control technologies that universally impose economic pain – and ironically, increase CO2 emissions in the process.)

The result of this framing is that we have created three decades of environmentalists who “know” that folks who seek profits are bad. And three decades of business leaders who “know” that if you’re an environmentalist, you must be wearing a patchouli-drenched hemp mumu who is out to destroy the economy.

The really painful part of this is that there are so many opportunities to improve the environment and grow the economy – but they are outside of the regulatory paradigm, and outside of the conventional wisdom. But as Hamlet said, “there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. And the environmental community is no less culpable than the business community with respect to the limitations of their respective philosophies.

Sean