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Sat, May 19, 2001

Bush: Americans can still have it all

Calvin Woodward, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Ask not what you can do for your country's energy shortage. Concepts like sacrifice, rationing, austerity - maybe turn down the air conditioning or even give up the SUV - are missing in President Bush's plan to deal with the crunch. They're missing in Democratic plans, too.

Conservation," says Bush, "does not mean doing without." Bush's blueprint relies on more energy supplies and a basket of enticements for greater energy efficiency. In his speech introducing it, he called conservation "the result of millions of good choices made across our land on a daily basis," and asked for no hard choices in particular.

Rozanne Weissman, speaking for the Alliance to Save Energy, was not surprised. "Americans do not want sacrifice and deprivation," she said. "This administration doesn't want to look like the Jimmy Carter administration - telling people to turn their thermostats down and then not getting re-elected."

Congressional Democrats have proposed a variety of steps to shelter Americans from sky-high costs. Like Bush, they don't question the idea that people can continue to have it all. "Democrats do not advocate energy policies that will require rationing or reductions in our standard of living," says the House Democrats' energy plan.

People must be helped with energy "without having to make large and painful lifestyle changes." Some Americans are ready to be enlisted in a national effort, if anyone should ask. "I would try to be a good citizen and work harder," said Tom Mitchell, 58, in Pasadena, Calif., the state hit hardest. "The president has to get the people to conserve by putting in rationing like we did in the 1970s," Albert Furtek, 80, said in Springfield, Mass. But leaders want no part of that decade's gloom, not to mention Carter's ill fate in the election that followed. Vice President Dick Cheney, architect of the Bush energy plan, has protested "the impulse to begin telling Americans that we live too well and - to recall the '70s phrase - that we've got to do more with less." He said: "The aim here is efficiency, not austerity."

* * * April 18, 1977: "Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem that is unprecedented in our history," President Carter began in an address to the nation about the energy crisis then. Like Bush and Congress now, he proposed rewards for energy efficiency. But he also introduced penalties for waste, and took on the culture of consumption. "We must not be selfish or timid," he said. He called for "equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people and every interest group." "This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war," he said. He demanded "strict conservation," promised to tax people for the "luxury" of driving gas-guzzlers and said, "Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth." Carter this week said the energy problem now is not nearly as serious as it was then. The nation is actually more dependent on foreign oil now than in the 1970s. But supplies so far are more stable, and shortages are generally not considered a crisis, yet, outside California.

* * * Selfishness, wastefulness, limits - these are far from Bush's vocabulary. Although Cheney did not like the phrase as it was used in the 1970s, Bush said it is possible now, through technology, "to do more with less." Still, hard choices loom. Opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, as he wants, would mean sacrificing some wilderness. Keeping it off limits to the oil industry, as many Democrats want, would mean sacrificing a potential energy source.

Bush imposed an energy diet on federal facilities in California early this month, ordering them to cut power use as much as they could. Steps include raising thermostats to 78 degrees for the summer, closing off spare space and turning off escalators when energy shortages in the state are critical. As for the public, Weissman said Americans can do commonsensical things to cut waste, things "our mothers told us growing up." Sacrificial conservation - vacationing closer to home, for example, to save on gas - might not be needed nationally, if people can afford the prices.

"We're not asking people, 'Don't buy more stuff,' " she said, but rather to consider whether every light in the house has to be on when everyone is in one room.

Sitting in her idling 1995 Isuzu Rodeo while waiting to take her cousin into downtown Chicago, Cyd Rogers, 30, said it's costing her $38 to fill up about every four days. Pump prices are driving her "insane."

But she won't get rid of her thirsty SUV. "Once you get used to driving this, you can't switch back to a car."

http://www.trnonline.com/stories/05192001/regional_news/24967.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 19, 2001