That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [114]
In addition, the vested interests in the oil, coal, and gas industries, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spread their political donations around to make sure that nothing happened. As Lizza noted, “Newt Gingrich’s group, American Solutions, whose largest donors include coal and electric-utility interests, began targeting Graham with a flurry of online articles about the ‘Kerry-Graham-Lieberman gas tax bill.’”
In the middle of all this, President Obama decided that he would not spend any significant political capital to press for the clean-energy legislation, to set a price on carbon, or to refute aggressively the climate-change deniers. His political advisers told him it would not be good politics heading into the 2012 election. Rather than change the polls, the president chose to read the polls.
So 2010 turned out to be a microcosm of all the forces undermining our ability to get something big, or even something small, done to deal with our energy and climate challenges. The Democrats were cowardly, and the Republicans were crazy. The Democrats understood the world they were living in but did not want to pay the political price—alone—for adapting to it. The Republicans simply denied the reality of this world. Democrats didn’t have the courage of their convictions. Republicans had the wrong convictions. In the end, both parties acted as if a serious energy and climate policy is a luxury that can be put off indefinitely or achieved simply with investments and incentives but without a price signal.
By the end of 2010, the energy debate shifted to the prospect of abundant domestic natural gas, which emits only half as much carbon dioxide as coal. Recently, new exploration and drilling technologies have made vast new gas reserves economically attractive. Because of this, America’s recoverable gas reserves have grown ten- to twentyfold in just the last few years. This sounds great—and it might be—but it could equally portend real trouble if not put in the proper context. If we just opt for one more fix of cheap hydrocarbons, consuming it as fast as we can, this bonanza will simply extend our energy and climate denial, make things far worse, and miss the next great global industry. If we choose to use gas as an intelligent bridge to a clean-energy future, it can make the transition easier. Where possible, we should use gas to shut down our oldest, dirtiest coal power plants as rapidly as we can. But to exploit these new reserves of natural gas, which are embedded in deep formations, special drilling techniques known as “fracking” are required, and these can be environmentally destructive. The natural gas industry and the environmental community need to work together to develop guidelines that determine where drilling for natural gas can safely take place and how to avoid contaminating aquifers.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded; Hungry, Thirsty, and Unstable
We began this chapter by recounting the events of 1979 that fed off one another to create a giant feedback loop that has fueled the energy and climate challenge faced by America and the world ever since. A similarly toxic feedback loop, or vicious cycle, appeared in 2010. Unless we create a virtuous cycle to counter it, it will wreak even greater havoc.
Here is what we mean: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization tracks the global prices of fifty-five food commodities. In December 2010, the FAO Food Price Index hit its highest level since records began being kept in 1990, climbing above the peak reached during the 2008 food crisis. Those rising food prices were one factor, perhaps the last straw, that sparked the political uprising in Tunisia, which quickly spread to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and across the Arab world. Those uprisings then triggered disruptions in oil production and speculations in oil futures, sending