Marketing energy strategy

Give outgoing U.S. Energy Sec. Federico Peña credit for this: The press release unveiling his department's comprehensive national energy strategy (see related story, p. 31) does not place children at the center of the marketing campaign. The administration of President Bill Clinton proclaims so frequently to be acting on behalf of children that it's refreshing to see a policy proposal anchored in less sentimental but nevertheless serious priorities. Does someone in Washington,

April 13, 1998

3 min read

The administration of President Bill Clinton proclaims so frequently to be acting on behalf of children that it's refreshing to see a policy proposal anchored in less sentimental but nevertheless serious priorities. Does someone in Washington, D.C., think Americans might somehow succeed as parents without government help?

The more important question should be whether someone in Washington, D.C., thinks Americans can enjoy security, prosperity, and environmental quality without intrusion by the government in energy choices. But child-centered marketing is none the less relevant because it epitomizes a hucksterism so characteristic of the current administration that aggressive skepticism has become the only safe way to greet policy initiatives.

Acting for children

Last year, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, in spite of steadily improving air quality, decided to toughen standards for air pollution by ozone and small particles. Debate, including dissent within EPA and its scientific advisors, didn't affect the outcome. EPA declared itself to be acting in the interests of children and proceeded, with Clinton's approval, to impose a costly and unwarranted rule.

The administration's position on global warming at an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, late last year followed a similar pattern. Official arguments made much about scientific certainty that doesn't exist on the issue. The U.S. ultimately offered up economic self-sacrifice to a protocol it calls a negotiating triumph because of provisions for trading emission credits. Needing to sell this capitulation to a properly wary Congress, the administration now trots out hilarious figures purporting to show that costs of the requisite energy restructuring will be modest.

And this pattern of lavishly marketed heavy-handedness developed on the watch of a President who campaigned as a tax-averse, small-government Democrat yet who, soon after taking office, launched marketing campaigns on behalf of an enormous tax increase and nationalized health care. How can anyone not be skeptical?

Into this atmosphere Peña makes his energy strategy proposal. Everyone can salute the stated aims: stability, security, prosperity, environmental safety and health, supply diversity, stability of domestic oil production, growth in domestic gas production, and so on. Yet a summary section on reducing U.S. vulnerability to oil supply disruptions offers goals such as "diversify import sources" and "reduce consumption." In the absence of a specific commitment to market freedom, goals like these must be construed as the first steps toward government meddling.

It is possible that the DOE has learned the lessons of energy history, principal among which is that markets satisfy humanity's energy needs better than governments do. Always. Yet Peña's DOE belongs to an administration disinclined to see things that way, an administration inclined to govern too much, especially where the environment is concerned. To assume that the DOE would appropriately defer to markets would, therefore, be risky.

A beginning?

As always in the Clinton administration, the substance and the marketing are inseparable. The energy strategy's marketing comes into focus in this statement by Peña: "This strategy is just a beginning of what I believe is a journey toward energy security, economic expansion, and greater protection of our environment."

In fact, that journey began late in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, when officials started recognizing that the biggest U.S. energy problem was government intrusion in energy choices. An energy strategy that ignored the lesson would begin only a swerve away from progress.