No one has accused US President George Bush, who likes short work days and long naps, of being overly energetic. But not long after the milestone of his first one hundred days in office has passed, a different sort of energy situation is about to engulf his Presidency.
America is facing energy woes. Last winter California, the nation's most populous state, faced a number of rolling blackouts as electricity demand outpaced electricity supply. Predictions are for increased brownout/blackout periods this summer, perhaps as high as fifteen hours a week in most households. As California has been the trendsetter in so many other areas, so with electricity: rolling blackouts are now seen as a strong possibility in many of the nation's geographic regions.
This situation poses a very large problem for Bush. He believes in the free market, which means even as evidence of price-gouging by electricity vendors is verified, he asserts that only competition can rein in spiraling energy prices. (Rates in California have gone up by 50 percent, with further rate increases predicted.) He hates, he positively abhors, the idea of price controls.
Additionally, he has strong ties to energy companies, especially as many of the large profitable vendors come from his home state of Texas. He -- or at least his voluble vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been making speeches on this very subject -- does not believe that energy conservation can do much to lessen demand.
So Bush is stuck with the position that doing nothing to alleviate current hardships is the best course: he insists that even if electricity rates double and electricity becomes unavailable for hours a day, only building new power plants, new nuclear generation plants, and stringing huge amounts of new cable will solve the problem.
Politicians learn to their dismay that ignoring the current problems of the electorate is a recipe for disaster. Telling Californians to wait for three or four years, when their businesses shut down, their homes go without electricity, their jobs disappear and their lives are disrupted in all sots of ways, is not going to work. Bush is in for big trouble.
The political difficulties over energy facing Bush are worse than just described. For if Americans are dependent on electricity, they are passionate about automobiles. Americans have a love affair with their cars. This is not news: a sizeable percentage of global pollution and global warming is caused by this strange American passion, one that the citizenry of the US just will not abandon. In recent weeks gasoline prices have been zooming, up between sixteen and fifty percent depending on region. (Prices have gone up most in the Midwest.)
There is every indication that the prices will rise considerably higher in the next several months, for Americans drive more in the summer. When the weather turns good in cold regions, when workers have their holidays, the love affair between Americans and their cars blossoms profusely. From going for a drive for the sheer pleasure of being on the road, to going to the lake or mountains for a picnic, to going on vacation, Americans pile into their cars and drive in huge numbers.
Thus, while gasoline is in short supply, demand is about to escalate. Again, President Bush has no solution -- other than drilling for oil in the pristine wilderness in Alaska and saying, "Wait for four or five years until new refineries are built."
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