Haze shrouds Kaine’s vision

Demonstrating a politician’s enduring affinity for speaking loudly while carrying a soft stick, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine calls for Southern states to confer on a regional energy and climate change policy. His stated hope is that the 16-state Southern Governor’s Association will arrive at a consensus that will provide greater audibility to the region’s voice in Washington. But will that voice be more than a whisper in the cacophony?
Kaine shrinks, with cause, from setting dates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or establishing other energy regulations. “I don’t think you can start with a goal,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I think you start with a process in which you come up with goals and strategies to meet the goals.”
Well, government always starts with process, doesn’t it? Goals are points of destination, which are useful in determining where precisely one is going. Kaine is not so sure principally because Americans increasingly want government to go elsewhere on energy, one of those points being out of the way.
Some politicians ignore this to results that displease. Left-leaning Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, soon to be replaced by left-leaning Democrat Mark of the same surname, was a co-sponsor of a bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions through a so-called “cap-and-trade” scheme. The idea seemed simple enough, and that it was in depth of thought.
The legislation aimed to reduce U.S. reliance on coal, the supply of which is abundant, in favor of a shift to natural gas, the supply of which is limited. Americans stinging from the bite of higher fuel prices peered through the fog of environmental daydreams toward the looming outcome: soaring prices to rein in surging demand for constrained supplies. In other words, higher costs. Meanwhile, in Europe, where emissions caps are in place, emissions rise.
No wonder even fellow Democrats are wary of Kaine’s hazy Southern energy vision. “The National Governors Association made an attempt this year to do some significant things and found it to be very difficult,” Tennesee Gov. Phil Bredesen told the Times-Dispatch. Difficult because Americans these days are concerned in an almost exclusive sense about cost. Environmentalists, and thus Democrats, see stratospheric energy prices as an open door for renewables and more regulations; Americans see only thinning pocketbooks.
Under the category of things the left doesn’t get is the corresponding appeal of increased oil exploration and drilling. That would happen in Virginia under a bill proposed by Sixth District Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke. It would allow Kaine as governor to petition the Department of the Interior to lift a ban on exploration off the state’s coast. To imply as Goodlatte has that such measures would lower gas prices now is misleading. To suggest as Goodlatte does that accessing existing U.S. supply will benefit Americans later – and would have already had drilling bans not been in place – is an exercise in routine logic.
America relies on foreign supplies for more than two thirds of its oil consumption, up from less than a fourth in 1970. That trend has corresponded with ever-tightening restrictions on drilling, a scenario produced mostly by Democrats, who in turn blame oil companies for rising prices. The law of supply and demand possesses the quality of a vapor in the minds of some on the left. Since it can neither be seen nor touched, it does not exist.
An aside: Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and presidential candidate Barack Obama are waxing indignant over Big Oil’s failure to drill on 68 million acres leased by producers. Trouble is, the oil is all but gone, according to both oil companies and the Energy Department. The land is “tapped out.” So what now?
Naturally, more finger wagging, fist shaking and, of course, photo opportunities. Enter Kaine.
Forming “a Southern strategy,” as the governor says he intends, is an ambition with merit. But producing something more palatable than another news conference will be daunting, particularly if the starting point for the process is a place far removed from the facts.