Political Roundup: A “Plan to Act” without a “Plan of Attack”
Posted June 25, 2010 at 9:57 am 
Filed in: This Thursday, Democrats discussed their energy strategy in a closed door caucus meeting.
After the meeting, E&E Daily quotes Majority Leader Reid as he states his four main goals for an energy bill: “Whatever form it takes, we’re going to move forward. We agree we must deal with the catastrophe in the Gulf, we must create millions of new jobs, we must cut pollution, and we must strengthen our national security and energy independence.”
To us, this sounds a little like Democrats have a “Plan to Act” but not a true “Plan of Attack.” Any bill that passes must have bipartisan consensus and reach 60 votes. This Thursday, Politico reports that Senator Lindsey Graham’s exit from the American Power Act has created a void that still must be filled: “[Senator Joe] Lieberman acknowledged that it’s been more difficult to negotiate with Democrats and Republicans since Graham left the talks. ‘Unfortunately, that’s true, and if Lindsey re-engaged, it’d be significant in many ways,’ he said. ‘He’d bring along a couple more Republicans, and he’d encourage moderate Democrats to believe this is doable this year.’”
Regardless of the possibilities of passage, even more senators have been stepping to the plate with their own ideas. In the Washington Post on Friday, Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Richard Burr (R-NC) introduced a bill that would expand both nuclear power and natural gas usage. Burr states, “We believe a bill that has climate as part of it probably doesn’t move in the United States Senate.”
Burr is right that cap and trade is controversial; however, there is much debate over the future of natural gas as well. An MIT study released Friday predicts a twofold expansion in the use of natural gas in the coming decades. However, even this did not seem to please the most ardent of natural gas supporters. According to the NY Times, “T. Boone Pickens… said that the study paid too much attention to the electricity sector and not enough to using natural gas as a substitute for gasoline and diesel in transportation.”
We are all for the expansion of natural gas in power plants as the most efficient use of this resource; however, natural gas does not offer the same benefits as electricity in vehicles. As the NY Times article says, “Natural gas vehicles emit about three-quarters as much carbon dioxide per mile as gasoline-powered ones. The switch would not have a large impact on carbon — only about a ton per vehicle per year for a typical American car, according to the report.” And counting on natural gas for transportation could lead to the same single resource problem that we face today: dependence on a single fuel for transportation instead of a diversity of inputs.
On Tuesday, following Frederick W. Smith’s testimony on Capitol Hill, we again covered our chosen solution to end our dangerous dependence on petroleum. Now, it is up to Harry Reid to include the electrification of transportation in his “Plan of Attack.”
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