Enter Burns' contest on your favorite financial management tips. A quarterly study of equity investments made by the venture capital community. If there's an energy crisis in America, it's not because there are shortages of oil, natural gas, coal or other fuels. Federal geologists say abundant oil and natural gas deposits probably lie beneath the western Gulf of Mexico, but Florida's Gov. Jeb Bush opposes opening the area to drilling because voters there fear oil spills. Some oil prospectors say there's good potential beneath the Great Lakes, but Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's home-state Republican allies in Michigan strongly oppose drilling in those waters.
Cheap oil boosts the economy but discourages conservation.
Deregulation encourages new players to build electric power plants, but there's no incentive for anyone to build spare capacity that would only be used in a heat wave. They note with some alarm that the ability to explore for oil and gas on federal lands has fallen sharply. Today, just 17 percent are open. Yet the authors urge the federal government to inventory the resource potential and restrictions on all federal lands before pushing to open any particular area, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. They also urge the federal government to impose passenger car gasoline mileage standards on sport utility vehicles, minivans and light trucks, which could save as much oil as Alaska produces.