Oil is expensive, or at least it was yesterday, with crude topping $60 a barrel. It often comes from dicey corners of the globe. Its consumption can have unpleasant environmental effects.
So if we could figure out a way to use less of it, especially what we buy from others, that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
At what price would it still be a good thing?
The House and Senate are debating energy bills that include provisions for diversifying the nation's energy portfolio, but Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., has something more comprehensive in mind -- the New Apollo Energy Act.
Officially known as HR2828, the reference to Apollo in the legislation's title is a link to the culminating stage of NASA's efforts to put a man on the moon (after the Mercury and Gemini manned missions).
Just as President Kennedy challenged the United States to get to the moon by the end of the 1960s (and ahead of the Soviet Union), so today the country needs an ambitious challenge today to achieve energy self-sufficiency, according to a news release from Inslee's office accompanying the legislation's introduction.
Certainly New Apollo is ambitious if by no other measures than length and complexity -- not to mention cost. It incorporates everything from loan guarantees for clean-energy (wind, biomass, geothermal, ocean wave, solar, photovoltaic, minimal-emission coal and increased hydroelectric production at existing dams) to billions for research to tax credits for more fuel-efficient cars and planes to caps on greenhouse gases to tax incentives on the sale of alternative fuels.
Some may be inclined to look at New Apollo and endorse its backers' vision of legislation that will address vexing national security, economic and environmental questions, seize the initiative in making the United States a center of energy-efficiency technology -- and create jobs to boot.
Skeptics may be inclined to look at New Apollo and think, "oh great, another bloated piece of pork-barrel legislation that will produce a hideously expensive boondoggle for taxpayers."
There's plenty of historical precedent for New Apollo to be more the latter than the former. The House and Senate energy bills are replete with nods and sops to every geographic, industrial and issue interest with a lobbyist. Then there's the quadrennial American tradition of mollifying corn growers through ethanol subsidies (greetings, voters of Iowa!).
And then there's the legacy of the synfuels program of the Carter era, a venture that defines the very concept of boondoggle.
Inslee said New Apollo is different. In a recent interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Inslee says New Apollo relies less on specific government fiat for specific technologies and more on setting goals for oil-consumption reduction or greenhouse-gas emissions and letting the market decide on the best way to meet them.
Although New Apollo does pump billions into research and commercialization of clean-energy technologies, Inslee says the way to keep those dollars from chasing dead ends is to expect investors to put up money as well. "People have to have enough confidence in their proposal to have skin in the game," he says.
That said, Inslee says not every idea will turn out to be work. "You should not expect 100 percent success from any project involving innovation," he says. "Any step forward involves some degree" of risk and potential for failure. "You have to steel yourself a little bit to that."
The risk of not doing something, he adds, is missed opportunity. His argument: Government-mandated fuel-efficiency improvements for cars, had they continued to increase, would by today have alleviated the need for Middle Eastern oil.
The countervailing argument is that if the market is supposed to drive the push to greater fuel efficiency, won't it do that, anyway, without the benefit of a massive government program? The longer oil stays above $50 a barrel, the more automakers will want to produce hybrids or alternate-fuel vehicles, and more oil will be enticed to market.
Inslee says that won't address global warming or the dependence on Middle Eastern oil (he might have added that it's not just Middle East oil that's a concern, but imports from other trouble spots such as Nigeria and Venezuela).
But that might point to one of the major shortcomings of New Apollo -- its attempt to be everything to everybody. The original Apollo program had one specific goal in mind -- put men on the moon. New Apollo is energy policy, economic development, jobs creation, environmental regulation and tax restructuring all rolled into one (and if there's an interest left out, it won't be once Congress gets done with the bill).
Inslee contends big legislation is what's needed for such a big issue: "It's not something you can nibble on the edges."
The challenge for New Apollo's backers, then, will be to prove that what they're proposing doesn't prove even more unsatisfactory -- gorging on tables of unhealthy food, with much more left to waste, and little to show for it at the end except an uneasy bloated feeling and a huge bill.