War in Iran. Gasoline rationing. A military draft. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Double-digit inflation and unemployment. The draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
This is where current energy policy is leading us, a nightmare scenario played out as a policymaking exercise in Washington on Thursday by a group of former top government officials portended.
Two bipartisan business-supported groups sponsored an elaborately staged role-playing game called Oil ShockWave that tried to dramatize the impact of US dependence on oil imported from unstable and unfriendly parts of the world.
The organizers have an agenda: They hope to prompt Congress to act on energy legislation and to push the issue into the presidential campaign.
The game was set in the spring and summer of 2009, under a new administration that has inherited current energy policy. The match that ignited the conflagration was US$150-a-barrel oil, brought on first by instability in Central Asia and then a military and political confrontation with Iran and Venezuela.
The president's senior advisers -- played by former White House aides, military leaders and Cabinet officers -- met urgently to try to fashion advice for the president to cope with the political, economic, social and military effects of the oil shock. The president, of unspecified party affiliation, remained offstage throughout but was consistently referred to as "he."
The group was led by the national security adviser, played by Robert Rubin, secretary of the Treasury during much of the Clinton administration. At one point, weighing a variety of unpleasant options, Rubin said in near despair: "This wouldn't be this big a problem if the political system a few years ago had dealt with these issues."
Carol Browner, the Democratic former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who played the secretary of energy, chimed in: "Year in and year out, it has been difficult to get a serious energy policy."
She and others noted that previous Congresses failed to act on auto mileage standards, efficiency measures and steps to replace foreign sources of oil.
Michael McCurry, Clinton's former press secretary, who played a senior counselor to the fictional new president, said that energy issues were barely discussed in next year's campaign.
That is the moral of the story, the organizers said.
Congressional inaction and political inattention could lead to dire, yet completely foreseeable consequences.
"Once a crisis actually hits, policy tools are largely ineffectual," said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, one of the sponsors of the event. "The participants recognized that Congress has to get out in front on oil security before events overtake it."
The other sponsor was Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), an action-oriented group committed to reducing the nation's dependence on oil.
It is led by Frederick Smith, the chairman of FedEx and retired general P.X. Kelley, former commandant of the Marine Corps.
Both groups have issued numerous reports on US oil policy and have urged Congress to act quickly to reduce the demand for oil, increase supplies from reliable sources and reduce economic dependence on fossil fuels.
Thursday's exercise, the organizers acknowledged, was a bit of a stunt to publicize the issues and nudge Congress and the presidential candidates.
All the former policymakers recruited for the cast got promotions, except Rubin.
"Life can be cruel," he said.
Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state in US President George W. Bush's first term, moved up to secretary of state. Retired general John Abizaid, former head of the Pentagon's Central Command, played the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. John Lehman, secretary of the Navy in the Ronald Reagan administration, became secretary of defense. Gene Sperling, former national economic adviser to Clinton, was the secretary of the Treasury.
Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 commission, served as the fictional director of national intelligence.
The only leading participant not to have held a senior government post was Daniel Yergin, an expert on the oil industry and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
The official surrogates sat in a mock-up of a White House situation room and considered the options for dealing with an uprising in Azerbaijan that had cut the flow of oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
As oil prices rose past US$110 a barrel, they discussed what the president should say and do. Browner, as the fictional energy secretary, suggested reimposing the national 89kph speed limit. The political advisers rejected that as an "eat your peas" proposal that would not go over well in Congress or with the public.
Surveying the financial markets, which were plunging as oil prices spiked, Rubin fell back on a favorite phrase as a top Wall Street executive and government official: "Markets go up and markets go down."
Much of the discussion echoed the current debate over the run-up in real-world energy prices.
"Is this a short-term spike or a long-term economic reality?" McCurry asked. No one had an answer.
When the group reassembled, it was a few months later, and the crisis had deepened. Iran had drastically cut its oil production in response to Western economic sanctions imposed because of its nuclear weapons program. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez followed suit, driving prices beyond US$150 a barrel.
The Iranian nuclear program touched off talk of war.
The military advisers urged redeployment of the bulk of the US' naval and air power to the Persian Gulf in anticipation of war and urged reinstatement of the draft for young men and women. Domestic policy advisers recommended limited releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and mandatory fuel-saving measures, like gasoline rationing and limits to Sunday driving.
McCurry said the president realized that he had no good choices.
"He knows he's a one-term president because of this," he said. Robbie Diamond, president of SAFE, said the exercise demonstrated the economic and national security costs of the US dependence on foreign oil.
"Now they have the opportunity on Capitol Hill to truly rise above ideology and enact a comprehensive energy bill that meaningfully reduces our oil dependence," he said. "Without measures that address both supply and demand, they have failed the American people."
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