Faster than an overnight poll, the Bush administration's rhetoric has done an about-face on energy conservation, changing its tone from condescending to respectful. Let's hope Bush defies the expectations of his critics. The fact is, conservation is good business, sound economic policy and a symbol not of limits, but of the degree to which American ingenuity can stretch the limits of what we have. And conservation can make a real difference in the future. If, for example, the United States raised average automobile fuel efficiency by about four miles a gallon, the country would immediately start saving more oil per year than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could produce at its peak, which, if drilling were allowed there, wouldn't happen until 2030.
Efficiency is cheap, quick, and it works.
If this administration looked at it with green eyeshades and said, 'What can we do that makes the most sense on a cost-effective basis,' the entire thrust of the plan would be different, with greater focus on conservation and renewables. Conservation got a bad political reputation 22 years ago, when the United States was in the throes of its second oil price shock in five years. Fuel prices, which had soared after the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, had risen again after the Iranian revolution of 1979. Jimmy Carter wore sweaters around a pointedly underheated White House, speed limits were lowered to a miserly, fuel-saving 55 mph, and cub newspaper reporters like me were collecting irate quotes from people in line at gasoline stations. But in the two decades since I covered the oil and gas industry for the Wall Street Journal, creative and profitable ways of saving energy have rescued the United States from dire forecasts of deprivation and limits to growth.