Wonders Yet To Come: A Sound Basis For US Energy Policy?
Kurt Cobb | Jan 06, 2014 12:42AM ET
Last week when I laid out seven misconceptions about energy shared by the public and policymakers, the pushback I received had little to do with the actual data I used to demonstrate my point. This is probably because the data are from official public sources and available to anyone with an Internet connection to inspect and verify. Most of the pushback bore the sentiment, "Well, you are right about the data. But, just you wait. There are big things that are going to happen in the future with (fill in your favorite fossil fuel) because of (fill in your favorite technology and/or name of supposedly large fossil fuel deposit)."
This is what I refer to as the "wonders-yet-to-come argument." It's an argument that ought to be familiar (and tiresome) to most everyone. It's been used frequently since the oil price its main testing and development facility is to be believed. Sometimes wonders don't arrive on schedule.
Despite all this, wonders-yet-to-come seem to dominate U.S. energy policy. There is talk of changing laws to allow the exporting of oil and natural gas. There is talk of American energy independence. There is talk of an American energy renaissance and the ruination of OPEC. It is all very breathless and essentially baseless.
It is an hysteria created by an industry that can no longer deliver on the promise of cheap, reliable energy--an industry that finds itself in the fight of its life, a fight against physics and geology that is increasingly unbending in the face of wonders-yet-to-come.
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