U.S. Energy Policy: Serving the Economy First

Throughout the years, no matter which party is in voted into the White House, though US Energy policy has undergone significant changes concerning the details of advancing beyond fossil fuels, its overall pattern and approach has remained essentially the same: Encourage new technology, but continue harvesting energy largely from the same pollutant sources which the US has used since the dawn of the Twentieth Century. President George W. Bush, along with his Presidential predecessors, have provided ample lip service to the pursuit of employing the renewable energy technologies which are in existence as of this moment, but only the most minimal of steps forward have been passed into law and several steps backward have regressed the overall techno-idealist vision from becoming more than .02% reality in these "great" United States. Meanwhile, many nation-states like Brazil which are commonly referred to as the "Third World" have surpassed the ecological standards and fuel economies of the one true Super-Power by leaps and bounds![1] (Taking into account the great pride of US citizens, they should be very much dismayed by this fact.) The reason for this backwardness is the failure of each Presidential administration in recent decades to strike a balance between progressive ecology and a progressive economy, create and maintain policy which requires short-term sacrifice for the sake of the long-term future of the environment and the greatest obstacle, the failure of the government to reach a compromise with the oil and motor industries in order to achieve ecological improvements or to enforce limitations which could super-cede the authority of the business sector to impose these improvements upon the market.