There are no easy answers to America’s energy challenges, but if there’s any hope of finding anything resembling a solution, it surely begins with an honest assessment and discussion of the facts. And therein lies the problem: coming to terms with reality.
It’s a simple task, really, although in a business as politically charged as energy nothing is as easy as it seems. Yesterday’s affair in the U.S. Senate offered no evidence to the contrary. Consider a few quotes from Wednesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing that heard testimony from executives of the country’s largest oil companies:
“Is there anybody here that has any concerns about what you are doing to this country, with the prices that you are charging and the profits that you are taking?”
–Sen. Dick Durbin
“Yet you rack up record profits, record profits, quarter after quarter after quarter, and apparently have no ethical compass about the price of gasoline.”
–Sen. Diane Feinstein
“Consumers are angry, and they have every right to be. You’re making more money than ever. It doesn’t seem fair, guys. It just doesn’t seem fair.”
–Sen Herb Kohl
There’s also this intriguing colloquy yesterday between Sen. Patrick Leahy and two oil executives about their salaries. The Senator’s point, as far as we can tell, is to alert the American public that high-level oil executives make a lot of money. That’s not unusual, compared with many other industries. But oil, of course, is different.
And, this is a political year and politics is in high gear in Washington, perhaps more so than usual. The problem is that political grandstanding is as irrelevant as ever when it comes to intelligently discussing, much less solving America’s energy problem.