WASHINGTON D.C.—What happens when corporate leaders and academic experts on energy, climate change, and geopolitics sit down and brief the United States Senate on how the US can “achieve a more secure, reliable, sustainable and affordable energy future”?

Just how does a country go about ending an addiction to oil? Are people actually working out the solutions to this? Curious about what the dialogue around energy policy in America actually is, I headed to the Senate Energy Committee’s September 12 summit on Capitol Hill to find out what it sounds and feels like to have these figures gathered in one room, dreaming up the future. You can watch the webcast or read about the testimony before the Senate Energy Committee from the major news bureaus (Reuters UK, The Guardian, Globe and Mail, Associated Press)— but for an in-depth analysis beyond what most news organizations are reporting, read on.

Walking up to the iconic dome, I stumbled across an art exhibit on sustainability. Colourfully decorated globes graced the sidewalk on the virtual lawn of the Capitol. They were embedded with messages of hope and embellished with windmills: a brightly human contrast to the austere, geometric architecture of Washington D.C.

Of course, the “Cool Globes” exhibit was sponsored by Toyota: there was one globe devoted entirely to the virtues of hybrid cars.

Which forces the question: Who’s bringing you your vision of sustainability? Do your ideas about sustainability come from you? (A game: invest a minute today in making a word-association list of all the things that come into your mind when you think about ’sustainable living’: solar panels, re-usable shopping bags, organic farms, whatever they may be. Then re-examine the list, thinking about why those particular concepts came to mind.)

The beautifully illustrated globes, in their gorgeous, well-meaning, corporate-backed vision, turned out to be amazingly in sync with what was to take place within the Senate that morning.

A brief sketch, while waiting for the summit to begin: a woman arranges plastic water bottles on crimson tablecloths. The space slowly fills up with people in smart ties and black shoes, tapping furiously on their Blackberries. By the time the summit was underway, there was a seemingly-disinterested crowd of seventy or eighty people who had to be there for some kind of job: journalists, NGO newsletter-writers, aides and assistants to politicians, all the people who have to keep track of these kinds of proceedings for some reason or another. A young woman in the row behind me was getting a crash course from her older, more experienced companion in Old White Male Identification: “There’s Senator ___ … you can identify him because he normally parts his hair and combs it really flat over his head. … There’s Senator ___ — he often wears a sweater under his suit coat, ’cause I guess he gets really cold.” Of course, they had a pocket-sized “senator facebook” to look up the people they didn’t know. “Did you meet Senator ___? … Yes, the other evening, just for a minute … You know what Senator ___ said to us? ‘Climate change, that’s a hard booger.’ I’d never heard that one before.”

So, what have these Senators been doing to deal with energy and climate change (to pick this hard booger? … I’ve been trying to make that metaphor work for me, and I just can’t.) In Canada, there’s been recent talk about Stephan Dion’s Green Shift/carbon tax initiative. Where is the US these days?

Basically, the legislators are trying to make progress with energy policy in the next few weeks, before Congress adjourns for the year on Sept. 26. Partisan conflicts have made it difficult to get anywhere with it, but a group of senators from both sides of the aisle has come together to draft a proposal that has a chance of passing. They were first called the Gang of 10, now increased to the Gang of 20 or 22 (I can’t keep track of the size of their gang, but apparently they have a three-fingered gang sign—E for Energy!) Their draft proposal is called the New Energy Reform Act of 2008, or “New Era”. It’s a $84-billion compromise bill that includes renewable energy standards and tax incentives, a program to get new vehicles to stop dependence on petroleum fuels, and funding for research and development—but it also opens offshore areas to drilling that were previously off-limits.

Amid these challenges, as a way to create momentum, the Gang put together this energy summit. There were a number of corporate CEOs—from Shell, General Motors, General Electric Energy Infrastructure, and Northwest Airlines—and also some academics, such as Dr. John Deutch from MIT, and Dr. Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Dan Reicher, the director of Climate Change & Energy Initiatives at Google.org, also attended (to represent the “geeky side” of things, as one senator put it). All together, there were eleven panelists—five in the morning and six in the afternoon—that answered questions from the senators about technology, economics, and more.

So, what did they have to say?

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opened the summit by recognizing that we need bold new ideas. He pointed out that the auto was invented over a century ago, but that while we’ve been able to put a man on the moon over the decades, our autos still average 13-21 miles per gallon like the Model-T Ford did. Calling for “creative solutions”, he explained that “we need to view this not as a crisis, but as an opportunity.” Reid expressed his wish for “a magic formula … a silver bullet.” Wishing aside, the Senate majority leader admitted that the only silver bullet we have is to “decrease our consumption of fossil fuels.”

“The issue is bigger than any one of us, any one particular party,” Reid said.

I was pretty optimistic about what could come of the meeting after hearing those opening remarks. In a way, it felt historic: here are the US policymakers and industry leaders, finally coming to terms with climate change and dwindling oil resources, finally realizing the gravity of this situation and strategizing how to deal with it…. right?

Alas, we aren’t quite there; that precious turning point will happen in some other summit. That moment might be another three to five years, probably depending on who the next president is. This hearing seemed to focus largely on how to open new areas to drilling, and to lay the groundwork for making sure the US auto industry gets a bailout should their oil-powered economy crash.

Still, there was some interesting ground covered. Here are the highlights:

Transportation: the group identified three ways to transition our fleet of vehicles off oil: electrification, biofuels, and natural gas. They identified the significant challenges to pursuing each of these approaches, but agreed that all should be pursued to some degree. Both amazingly and yet predictably, there was absolutely no mention of reducing the use of cars: no mention of the nation’s arcane rail system, no mention of electric trams, no mention of mass transit infrastructure at all.

Renewable energy sources: Dan Reicher (Google.org) mentioned enhanced geothermal systems as a promising way to get renewable energy that’s constant (unlike solar and wind power). It’s a base-load technology that could be implemented in many places across the US.

Speculation: There was discussion about why the oil price has just dropped $50 a barrel in the past two or three months, but no firm consensus as to why that was (modern economics opaque to the experts, too). Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Mr. Steenland (Northwest Airlines) believed that Washington’s decision to be more aggressive about regulating oil speculation had contributed to that drop in price; however, the matter of speculation will be left to another bill. (There’s a hearing tomorrow about this, if you’re in the DC area.)

National security: It was pointed out that “energy is a strategic commodity that is being played around the world,” and that it’s not a great idea to have a vital product controlled by nations you don’t necessarily get along with. Sen. Voinovich (R-OH): “I look at the geopolitical situation… if you look at the fact that someone else controls the price [of oil], and the supply, and then take into consideration that we’re sending $600 billion overseas, and about 60% of that’s being picked up by OPEC nations … If somebody controls the cost of something that’s something that’s very valuable to you, or can control the supply of it, and are also at the same time buying your debt … Is this dimension of it something that’s of concern to any of you, or am I just exaggerating it?” No, everyone agreed that the US is losing geopolitical power over this.

Fossil fuels: Not surprisingly, the oil and coal producers wanted to ensure that we would continue with fossil fuels until it was no longer possible (though they did acknowledge the gravity of climate change). As the CEO of Foundation Coal framed the question, “The question or challenge before us is: how do we keep using coal to meet our energy needs, but reduce CO2 emissions?” (Notice the premise embedded in that question… the answer is, by the way, carbon capture and sequestration, which the government should help to fund). Furthermore, as Sen. Dominici (R-NM) stated, “We need to use crude oil … almost indefinitely.” He thought that the trend of low domestic production “makes no sense” in the era of $4 gasoline. (Nobody explained to him that oil is a non-renewable resource, and that U.S. oil production peaked in the 1970s: once you use it, you don’t get more.) Dominici emphasized that “we need to keep up” oil production. “We were astonished that the American people began to say ‘drill’ … That’s all we hear from our American people. That’s what brought us to this point.”

However, this wasn’t the only view expressed. One highlight of the summit was when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) confronted the room about drilling (Think Progress has a great video clip of the moment, which I recommend as it might restore some faith in politicians).

Dr. Yergin (CERA) cited a May 7, 1973 article in Time magazine which sketched “impending disaster”: “The Energy Crisis: Time for Action”. As Sen. Dorgan asked: “What is game-changing here? … How will we not be talking about the same set of problems fifteen years from now?”

There was a clear sense that the US is in a major transition, and that the next president is the transition president. “We’re resetting the system,” Mr. Verrastro (Center for Strategic and International Studies) said, citing 2004 as the year that the country really realized it was in tight supply.

But, as Reicher (of Google.org) pointed out, there is limited time and capital to make this transition. “We need to cut demand first,” said Reicher, identifying cutting demand as the “low-hanging fruit.” Odum (Shell) pointed out the need to think about how to build something, and design it wisely, not just make things more efficient after they’ve been built. And Verrastro pointed out the importance of sequencing— he maintains that “eliminating fossil fuels anytime soon is impossible,” but we need “tactical interim steps” to transition to something else. The apparent consensus which was skillfully orchestrated (watch the webcast if you want to learn how one manufactures an apparent consensus) was that we will certainly use the last economically-reachable drop of oil: nobody would contradict this out loud. Many affirmed that we need an “all of the above”, “comprehensive” approach to the energy challenges. But as Dr. Deutch (MIT) asked: “If everyone agrees that we have to do all of the above, why isn’t it happening?”

Viewed through one lens, the situation felt pretty grim. There was a moment when I was chilled with the sensation that no one in the room genuinely cared about the future we are heading towards: the person next to me was emailing birthday messages on her Blackberry, Sen. Feingold a few metres in front of me was leafing through a stack of Washington Post printouts, the guy in front of me was typing something on his MacBook: was anyone actually engaged in what was happening? People were hungry, they wanted to go to lunch; their Starbucks coffee cups were drained; they wanted to get laid; whatever. Who are these people, really? Are these the smart, talented people who are going to fix the mess we’re in? Well, from sitting in a room with them for several hours, I suspect that these are not our superheroes. The exec from Goldman Sachs is not going to save us with his money; the genius from Google is not going to save us with his technology. We’re part of an entrenched mess, with two centuries of fossil-fuel-dependent infrastructure, and no saviours or superstars have emerged to fix it. It’s a deep problem, a structural problem. Our leaders haven’t yet admitted that the structure is rotten. They’re daunted; they’re distracted.

But they’re who we’ve got. They look like us. They’ve got the same issues you and I do with sustainability: Many of them they would like to be more sustainable, but they’ve got really busy jobs, and family and relationships to think about, and it’s such a complicated and confusing and dire situation that they would rather pass it off to the next person.

I don’t want to offer you just one dismal lens to view this process—or our energy situation in 2008—through. It might be a true lens, but it’s not the only true one.

Through another lens: at least there are some people willing to talk about this. These execs and senators are not all alike, even if it is tempting to group them together as the “power elite”. Marvin Odum from Shell is a highly intelligent man who wants his company to make a pile of money, but he doesn’t have an aura of evil emanating from him (I checked). Nobody really wants to see our world broken. Some of these senators come across as stereotypical American characters, speaking in drawling voices and talking about “folks back home”, and others are highly eloquent: listen to Sen. Klobuchar’s concern about the people of Minnesota being able to get around. It’s a very mixed group of people, and because of this, it still has potential.

Many of us in the sustainability movement have convinced ourselves that the world is run by these people, these faceless figures: but it didn’t seem that way to me. What I saw within the walls of the Senate was a real vacuum, a bunch of confused adults trying to work out a big problem. It could be that these people need our help; that they can’t come up with an imaginative or vast picture of a sustainable future on their own. It could be that we are the ones that have to come up with the vision—and then take on the work of bringing them on board.

Tags: America, cars, energy, oil, peak oil, politics, U.S. Senate

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Posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 6:50 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.