Meanwhile, the nation has fallen in love with gas-guzzling SUVs and digitized nearly every aspect of life, boosting demand for gasoline and electricity. Although not widely publicized, the plan also calls for reduced energy consumption in federal buildings and calls for a tripling of alternative energy sources by 2020. There are tax incentives for hybrid vehicles and no doubt Congress will insist on further conservation and alternative fuels provisions once lawmakers begin their review of the policy. Predictably, the environmental community is unsatisfied. Its leaders want more emphasis on conservation and less on production and it has mobilized uncompromising opposition to Bush's proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploratory drilling.
Conservation is a laudable goal.
Waste is not. But Vice President Dick Cheney is right when he says conservation alone cannot solve our energy woes. In the first place, Americans have shown little propensity to conserve fuel in the past. Relying on conservation too heavily as a solution to the nation's energy problems would be just plain foolish. We don't even know precisely how much petroleum is in the refuge and we won't know until exploratory wells are dug to find out.