A man pumps gas into a Hummer SUV. Amid soaring gas prices throughout the nation, lawmakers are struggling to come up with ways to offer relief to drivers now paying over $3 a gallon.
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But having a vision is one thing, selling it another. The effort, he said, would require "the moral equivalent of war," which his critics took to referring to that as MEOW. They derided his "Voice of Doom" speech. He was wearing a sweater. He said to turn the heat down to 68. Listening to him over time was enough to make voters want to hibernate until Reagan came into office, declared morning in America, removed the solar panels, savored an oil glut that drove prices down below $10 a barrel in 1986 and postponed the day of reckoning.
So it was understandable that as both a former oilman and a natural politician, George Bush ran in 2000 on the argument that the problem was not too much consumption but too little production. When Al Gore suggested a range of tax breaks for everything from solar heat battery-powered cars, Dick Cheney called the ideas "goofy." During the Administration's first year, when Cheney's energy task force was developing its proposals, he tapped into the deep well of America's romance with freedom, frontiers, escape, extravagance, rebellion: anything other than Carter's clenched, cold vision of duty and darkness and austerity. "If you want to leave all the lights on in your house, you can," Cheney declared. "There's no law against it" — other than the laws of the market. "You will pay for it obviously, in the price." But it is your right as an American to be as wanton as your conscience and budget permits. Cajoling people into conservation was not going to be part of the script. "I think they ought to be able to make that decision for themselves, as individuals," Cheney told reporters in 2001. "And different people have different interests and different value systems."
That tone changed, of course, as prices spiked, and Bush over time began talking about conservation and carpooling and limiting non-essential travel. But as Carter found nearly 30 years ago, moral exhortation doesn't get you very far. Nor did the appeal to reason, prudence, responsibility to our children and theirs. Cheney may turn out to be the one who understood human nature best, that the market has no scruples but great judgment, and change comes when individuals are finally forced to pay attention to something that affects them directly, every day.
A CNN/USA Today poll found that nearly three out of four people think President Bush is not doing enough to solve the energy problem. A Pew poll found that 86% favor raising fuel standards, 82% want more federal funding for solar, wind and hydrogen technology, 68% want more investment in mass transit. Jacob Weisberg, writing in Slate about how high gas prices is "a subject that makes congressmen stupid," notes the illogic of Democrats who deplore high prices but also demand progress towards alternative fuels and more efficient cars, as though the first does not drive the second. Given political history, given how spooked and captive and craven lawmakers have been, it looks like people aren't going to wait for Washington to require Detroit to clean up its fleet, or for prices to come down.
It's almost enough to make you swallow hard and accept the $45 bite when you stop at the gas station, because markets bring pain and consolation together: if this goes on long enough, U.S. auto makers are sure to build less wasteful vehicles because that's what people will be buying, and fuel cells and solar power and windmills will all look more cost effective; when more of us take the train instead of driving to work the traffic will improve, if we switch to hybrids the air will clear, if we tap the sun our dependence on nasty or undependable countries for their oil will diminish, and Jimmy Carter's dreams will come true, 30 years later.