What about going back to propellors instead of jets?
Innovation cheaper than oil
Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, October 05, 2007
Conservation got off to a rough start. "Conservation is not the Republican ethic," sniffed Richard Nixon's domestic policy adviser. But Nixon did announce Project Independence, the energy equivalent of the Manhattan Project, which would deliver energy self-sufficiency within 10 years. It was madly ambitious. And quickly forgotten.
A few years later, Gerald Ford promised to break the shackles of oil by building 200 nuclear plants, 20 synthetic fuel plants and a long list of other projects. Nothing came of that, either. Ford did, however, introduce fuel efficiency standards that made a real difference to conservation.
More than his predecessors, Jimmy Carter believed security would be compromised as long as the industrialized world remained addicted to oil. Promising the "the moral equivalent of war," Carter called for the development of nuclear, coal and other energy sources, greatly increased conservation standards, and research into alternative and renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.
And that gets us to the first of the numbers mentioned at the top of this column: In 1980, public funding for energy research and development was $8 billion. Relative to overall spending, and what was at stake, it was a piddling amount, but it was something.
It didn't last. Ronald Reagan saw nothing wrong with the status quo and, with oil prices falling, pressure for change evaporated. And so cheap oil and booming economies returned. The world went full circle back to the 1960s.
That pleasing lull was brought to an end several years ago by soaring oil prices and the deepening quagmire in the Middle East. Today, even the oilman in the White House has said America must break its addiction to oil.
Which brings us to the second number at the beginning of this column: In 2005, public funding for energy research and development was $3 billion.
Compare that to the cost of policing the Persian Gulf. The first Gulf War alone cost at least $61 billion. Estimates for the current war in Iraq range from $500 billion to two trillion dollars.
So the U.S. has spent spectacular amounts securing oil supplies but it has given only pocket change to the development of energy alternatives. And as the U.S. goes, so goes the world.
"Government has always been at the centre of technological innovation, and most of America's largest industries have benefited from strategic government investments in their development," write Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in the new book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. Given the failure of every American president since Nixon to seriously fund energy research, "it's understandable that energy is the least innovative sector of the economy."
Americans and everyone else on the planet will be grappling with the consequences of this history for decades to come.
Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com
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