Do Londoners care more?

[ MAY 17, 2010 - OKLAHOMA CITY, OK ] - Do we remember $4-a-gallon gasoline? Or two U.S. wars in the Middle East in the last two decades? Are we concerned about our importation of foreign oil and massive trade debts that have made China our banker? Surely we are moved by the tragic oil spill damaging America’s Gulf Coast, seemingly unabated in its daily purge of crude?

After months of work toward a “comprehensive” energy and climate bill to theoretically reposition and clean up America’s energy future, two leading U.S. senators introduced the American Power Act on Wednesday and suggested a new $1 trillion-plus pathway affecting every American citizen and business. Yet no one seems to know, or care?

I awoke last Thursday in Houston, arguably the energy capital of America, if not the world, and began to search for news of the previous day’s Senate announcement. So imagine my surprise when I grabbed a USA Today (our nation’s “national daily”) and found no reference to this news at all. Not just absent from the front page, but absent from the front section and the entire “Money” section. Absent completely.

Next I grabbed the Houston Chronicle, the energy capital’s hometown major daily paper, and saw lots of coverage (understandably) about the oil disaster in America’s Gulf Coast. Much more focus about this tragic accident than any real coverage about this new energy bill. It makes me wonder if we aren’t destined to repeat the mistakes if we aren’t working for pathways in new directions, or at least to be aware.

Next came my real surprise. I grabbed a copy of that morning’s London-based Financial Times and saw on its front page a summary of the U.S. energy announcement and a referral to a full story. And that full story was on Page 3 and ran the whole length of the paper. So America’s new proposed trillion-dollar-plus energy and climate policy, which will affect current and future generations of Americans, was first- and third-page news to Londoners – and was virtually ignored across America.

How could this be? Aren’t we experiencing a crisis affecting our nation’s security (we rely too much on hostile nations), our economic base (we’re losing jobs to nations in the hunt for clean energy), and our very environment (spills and hurricanes destroy and cost billions)?

The ingenuity of America has always been to solve crises that others could not. We work hard. We think hard. And we have always accomplished great things, when we put our mind to it. But the lack of genuine awareness or care by too many is cause for real concern.

In case you missed it, here are a few highlights of the draft Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act.

• Large new incentives for nuclear power include $54 billions in loan guarantees.

• There are hundreds of millions of dollars for coal carbon capture test sites.

• New incentives for offshore drilling include new protections from spills and states’ ability to veto drilling plans within 75 miles from their shores.

• It makes sharp cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions of 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 and creates methods to hold polluters more accountable.

• It creates a cap-and-trade system for power plants and for large industrial facilities at a later date (although it currently does not cover transport sector emission).

• It provides a possible benefit to cleaner-burning, low-carbon natural gas as carbon costs level the playing field between fuel sources.

• It proposes a “hard price collar” to keep carbon prices between $12 and $25 a ton in the new trading markets that would be created, thus curtailing carbon emissions but also limiting the price impact to the carbon-heavy industries and their consumers.

• It suggests, according to its authors, the adoption of comprehensive clean energy and climate policies that would cut oil use, increase security, reduce pollution, and create jobs.

The senior U.S. senator from Massachusetts boasts: “This is a bill for energy independence after a devastating oil spill, a bill to hold polluters accountable, a bill for billions of dollars to create the next generation of jobs, and a bill to end America’s addiction to foreign oil.”

Wow, all that in one bill? If true, we need it now more than ever. Let’s set America on a path to own its own future; let’s get our people back to work on behalf of our country’s own best interests, and let’s improve our respect for the environment that sustains us, even as we clean up from our stumbles.

Surely the bill is not perfect, as I’m sure Congress has hobbled together too many special interests to forge the perfect path, but it’s a necessary start. All of what Sen. John Kerry promises is possible, and more, if we could only get people aware, enraged at the status quo and engaged to make America’s energy and environmental future better.

It’s my hope that we Americans care enough to make a difference, while we still can. It is my hope that we are aware enough to know we should care. At least as aware as Londoners seem to be.

Jim Roth, a former Oklahoma corporation commissioner, is an attorney with Phillips Murrah P.C. in Oklahoma City, where his practice focuses on clean, green energy for Oklahoma.