Killer Politics (11 page)

With Democrats like that, who needs Republicans?

And let's not forget another politician who helped throttle meaningful health care, Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, who has
been showered with nearly $1.7 million from the health care and insurance industries during the course of her federal career. She famously received $100 million for her state—another Louisiana Purchase—in exchange for not stalling the health care process.

Both Landrieu and Lincoln have former staffers who are high-powered lobbyists for health care and insurance interests. Are you beginning to see how this works?

We have met the enemy, and some of them are us. Take Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), who insisted his state receive special Medicare funding before he would vote for health care reform. In the end he was shamed into backing down. Campaignmoney.org, the website of the Public Campaign Action Fund, notes, “Nelson spent his career as an insurance executive, insurance company lawyer and, early in his career, Nebraska's state insurance regulator. He was chief executive officer of an insurance company and has sided with and received political support from business groups opposed to a public health plan as part of health reform.” The Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org) reports that Nelson has received more than $2 million from insurance and health care interests in three campaigns for federal office.

I was especially disappointed in Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), a member of the Senate Finance Committee and a longtime friend, for not supporting a public option. During his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, he has received in campaign donations more than $828,000 from insurance companies, $610,000 from health professionals, and $255,000 from pharmaceutical and health product companies. I know he thinks that health insurance co-ops can make a difference and that he didn't have the votes for a public option, but there is a time to attempt the impossible. This is a guy who, at the age of thirty-eight, achieved the impossible in 1986 by knocking off a favored incumbent, Mark Andrews, who had been in Washington since 1963! Until it was settled, no one thought he had the votes then either, but he had a slim 2,100-vote margin. That's all it took to win. When he went to the U.S.

Senate, he pledged to help balance the budget or come home. Well, he did neither, but I thought he was a terrific senator who just overestimated the task and the times ahead. I loved the audacious Kent Conrad who dared to dream big.

This health care debate was another opportunity to dream big, but that big-dreaming Kent Conrad was absent from the debate, replaced by just another political tactician. No one in Washington understands the budget better than Kent Conrad, and few senators work harder than he does. He's learned a lot in Washington, but I fear Kent Conrad has forgotten how to dream. Regretfully, he is not the only one.

Perhaps it has become politically passé to dream, but that's what Barack Obama sold us, and that is what inspired Conrad to endorse Obama—one of the first senators to do so. What happened to the dream? Where are the dreamers? Are forty Senate Republicans that damn tough?

At times like this, I hear in my mind the words of another dreamer, Senator Robert Kennedy, who said, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why?…I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Why not?
The only thing stopping us from accomplishing big things is that we have forgotten how to dream big.

IT'S GOING TO TAKE TIME

In the future, generations will be astonished that health care was ever considered anything but an inalienable right. Until then, we have work to do. What's it going to take to get to this promised land? It may well take a movement for a basic human right like the one led so majestically by Martin Luther King.

When I said this to Stephen A. Smith, the
Philadelphia Inquirer
columnist and one of my favorite guest commentators, he said the health care issue was
even bigger
than that because that cause was about African-Americans. This one is about
everyone.
This isn't an issue of politics or
capitalism versus socialism or even dollars and cents. This speaks to who we are as a country and who we aspire to be.

The pragmatist in me can accept that change may take longer than the idealist in me wants to accept. The goal is to lower the cost for consumers to an affordable or sustainable level. And we have to realize that at some level we all pay for the services we receive as citizens of this country. I just happen to believe universal health care is the best alternative.

What is so hard about doing the right thing?

I know we're better than this.

We have to be.

Another Fight for Independence

I CAN'T HELP BUT THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE. NOT MINE SO MUCH,
but the world we are leaving the next generation—my kids and yours. As I said earlier in this book, one of the handicaps of a democratic society is that our political and corporate leaders tend to think in election cycles and in quarters, not in a generational context. We don't address growing problems until they become a crisis.
Then
we muster the will to change. But that way of doing things can be much more painful than it has to be. The issues that are looming before us are not the ones that should divide us. It's not about gays, guns, and God. Those are social issues manufactured to get votes. The real issues coming down the pike affect us all and in a big way.

What if it were possible to rise above partisan politics, to bring both parties together, to find common ground and common goals? What if we were able to set out
national goals
that most of us could agree upon? We could seek a balanced budget in five years. Reduce cancer deaths by 75 percent in ten years…energy independence in ten years…Really, the sky is the limit if we could get a bipartisan think tank of politicians and others from the private sector to take on these key issues.

Let's talk about energy. I said in a previous chapter that we all pay taxes that subsidize military involvement in getting oil from the Middle East. One estimate is that our actual cost per gallon of gas is closer to $10. Our latest incursion in Iraq may eventually cost us $3 trillion, according to economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, yet consumers didn't save money. Prices at the pump hit $4 a gallon on Bush's watch. The American taxpayer got it coming and going.

America imports 70 percent of its oil—somewhere around 10 million barrels per day. About 5.5 million barrels a day comes from OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) nations. Most of the balance comes from Canada and Mexico. Ominously, according to Merrill Lynch, non-OPEC production has probably peaked to about 49–50 million barrels a day, and could slide to 47 million barrels a day by 2015. OPEC, which closely manages output, has been pumping around 30 million barrels a day.

In the immediate future, petroleum is going to continue to play a big part in the energy picture. As a country, we are addicted to oil, much as a junkie is addicted to heroin. The difference is, when he knocks down someone's door to feed his habit, the junkie doesn't have an army. (Please, let's not even argue the point that our interest in Iraq was about oil. If our goals were humanitarian, we would have been in Somolia, but their main cash crop is bananas, and we're not addicted to bananas.)

The problem is not just our junkie-like behavior; it is that there is another energy junkie in the neighborhood with a growing habit—China, which consumes about 7 million barrels a day and is getting thirstier by the minute.

For the first time in history, in 2009, Chinese domestic auto sales exceeded those of the United States. All of those vehicles are going to be burning gasoline.

Competition for oil forces prices upward, as it does any commodity. That's exacerbated by speculation and market manipulation. But while
the global thirst for oil is on the rise, most experts say production has peaked.

I don't know what happens when two desperate junkies are in the same room with the last needle full of smack, but I can predict what will happen if China and the United States get to that point. Geopolitics is one giant chess game, with countries continually positioning themselves to their best advantage. When it comes to the politics of oil, a finite resource, that chess game has already been lost. No one is going to win, but the longer we play, the better chance there is that the board will be overturned as fists begin flying. Both our economic and ecological salvation rests in our ability to go green.

Getting more than half of our oil from OPEC is not a good business plan. These people are not our friends. In 1973, they turned the spigot off and sent shock waves through our economy, though we were only importing 15 percent of our oil from OPEC then as compared to
more than half today.

First things first—let's stop doing business with OPEC as soon as possible by conserving, developing alternative energy sources, and producing more domestically. Because petroleum is used to make so many things—imagine if every bit of plastic suddenly disappeared from your home—it will play a role in our foreseeable future.

To wean ourselves from oil, we have to conserve, become more efficient, produce more, or simply do without. It's important that we subsidize alternative energies when necessary to ensure they have a fighting chance economically against the existing petro-economy, which, as I have noted, is surreptitiously underwritten by the muscle of the U.S. military. Ultimately, though, new technology has to make sense to the marketplace while meeting pollution standards. One thing we know for certain: The petroleum-based economy is a dead-end street. There is a limited supply and the damage to our environment has us at an ecological tipping point. So it makes sense for us to conserve and be more efficient before we try to drill our way out of trouble.

What about “Drill, baby, drill”? Well, it's dumb, baby, dumb to think we're going to drill our way out of this. It's simple math. We don't have the domestic reserves to support our habit. Yeah, but what about Alaska? According to the Department of Energy, “there is a 95 percent probability that at least 5.7 billion barrels of oil may be technically recoverable from the ANWR Coastal Plain of the Alaska North Slope.”
Peak
production is estimated at 650,000 barrels per day. It's hard for me to conceive that such a relatively small amount can have any impact—except on the pocketbooks of oil companies running out the string.

I'm not saying we should abandon drilling, but we ought to transition to renewable energy. President Bush lifted the drilling ban on coastal waters that are believed to contain 18 billion barrels of oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, based on seismic surveys in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Drilling is necessary during our transition away from OPEC oil and to green energy, but it is just part of the solution.

IT ALL STARTS WITH CONSERVATION

Since 61 percent of the oil we consume globally is for transportation, according to the Global Market Information Database (2007), we need to start there. I know Americans have a love affair with the car, but some things are going to have to change. Even as I write, automakers are shifting gears to electric cars. The Chevrolet Volt, expected to cost around $40,000, will get about 230 miles per gallon with a forty-mile range. The Department of Transportation says eight out of ten drivers commute less than forty miles a day, so it stands to reason that such vehicles could have a positive impact very quickly.

For years, Wendy and I have driven an electric GEM car at our lake home in Minnesota. It's like a large golf cart and perfect for scooting short distances. We love it. Plus, it's built in Fargo, North Dakota, and we like to support our local industries.

But ultimately electric cars will have to achieve the range of gasoline-powered vehicles. One key is battery technology. It's an old technology, but improving it is crucial not only to extending the potential reach of an electric car, but also for changing the way we produce and consume electricity. I don't think any one technology alone will free us from the petroleum habit, but the ability to store the power we create makes sense.

Another one of the goals of the Obama administration is to make the existing electric grid, which is susceptible to cascading blackouts, more efficient. There are actually three power grids operating in the forty-eight contiguous states—one east of the Rocky Mountains, another from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountain states, and the third the Texas Interconnected System.

In 2003 there was a giant blackout in the Northeast encompassing Cleveland, Toronto, Detroit, New York City, and thousands of communities in between. Traffic signals went dark. Subways stopped. People were stuck in elevators. Thousands were forced to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. The outage persisted for days in some places, costing an estimated $6 billion in economic losses, according to the Department of Energy. It turns out the problem originated with an Ohio power company. Overgrown trees had come into contact with power lines.

Not only is our grid susceptible to something as seemingly benign as overgrown trees, security experts believe that the system is wide open to cyber attack. In 2009 the
Wall Street Journal
reported that the Chinese and the Russians have infiltrated the grid and could take it out in the event of a war. Intelligence officials say cyber-spies have accessed systems operating everything from financial institutions to sewage. Obviously, these vulnerabilities need to be eliminated.

A new “smart grid” promises to address a very inefficient system. Computer technology can help direct energy where it is needed. By providing instant feedback to customers through meters in their homes that
will tell how much energy their appliances are using and the current cost, power companies will enable consumers to choose to use energy when demand is low and the price is cheaper. If you do laundry when demand is low, you can save. Brilliant in its simplicity!

Other advances include the use of high-temperature superconductors to provide loss-less transmission of electrical power by using liquid nitrogen to keep the lines cool. That's important to the energy market because often power generated hundreds of miles away is cheaper than a more local source.

While technology and other infrastructure investments should help us use electricity more efficiently on the grid, I believe that it can also make communities and individual households less dependent on it. I think the natural process will be for homeowners to seek energy independence from the grid through wind and solar power. It's
Back to the Future
…. In rural America, before electric cooperatives energized farms, folks depended on generators and wind for power. Some systems involved batteries, which were charged by wind generators.

Once again, we are seeing wind farms spring up.

North Dakota has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind energy, and it is just one of many states that are poised to become big wind energy players. However, at the moment, we lack the infrastructure to really capitalize on this source. According to the Department of Energy, “while electricity demand increased by about 25 percent since 1990, construction of transmission facilities decreased about 30 percent. In fact, annual investment in new transmission facilities has declined over the last 25 years.”

That hasn't stopped companies from investing in niche areas where there is both wind and available transmission line capacity. In windy regions, companies are competing hard to lease land for towers, just as they do in oil countries before they sink wells. When large capacity lines are built, the wind industry will be able to shoulder a significant portion of our country's energy needs.

SCIENCE WILL LEAD THE WAY

It's hard to imagine where this necessary transition away from fossil fuels will lead and how it will transform the world. Will we use more natural gas in coming decades or will hydrogen fuel technology come on line sooner than we think? Perhaps we will become so proficient at creating solar and wind energy—and storing it—that it will become the dominant energy source. The answers to these questions all depend upon the ingenuity of scientific minds—and on the market.

I'm optimistic and excited. I think green energy will be a major turning point in man's evolution and that we are living on the cusp of that transition. The sooner we embrace the transition, the more hope I have. It's an exciting time. Booms and busts relate closely to the cost of energy. Cheap energy drives progress. Our ability to create affordable alternative energy will have a lot to say about whether the Great American Boom is over or just moving into a new green phase.

In an op-ed for the
New York Times
after Obama's election, Al Gore said, “Here is the good news. The bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis. Economists across the spectrum—including Martin Feldstein and Lawrence Summers—agree that large and rapid investment in a jobs-intensive infrastructure initiative is the best way to revive our economy in a quick and sustainable way. Many also agree that our economy will fall behind if we continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign oil every year. Moreover, national security experts in both parties agree that we face a dangerous strategic vulnerability if the world suddenly loses access to Middle Eastern oil.”

WHAT ABOUT COAL?

Statistics from the Energy Information Administration show that “coal-fired plants contribute 45.4 percent of the nation's electric power. Nu
clear plants contribute 21.0 percent, while 20.8 percent is generated at natural gas–fired plants. Of the 1.2 percent generated by petroleum-fired plants, petroleum liquids represented 0.8 percent, with the remainder from petroleum coke. Conventional hydroelectric power provides 7.5 percent of the total, while other renewables (biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind) and other miscellaneous energy sources account for the remaining 4.2 percent of electric power.”

I come from coal country. North Dakota is a major coal-powered energy producer. It's cheap and abundant, but as a global industry, there are real drawbacks. The Sierra Club says, “Power plants are a major source of air pollution, with coal-fired power plants spewing 59 percent of total U.S. sulfur dioxide pollution and 18 percent of total nitrogen oxides every year. Coal-fired power plants are also the largest polluter of toxic mercury pollution, largest contributor of hazardous air toxics, and release about 50 percent of particle pollution.”

According to the Sierra Club, power plant pollution is responsible for thirty thousand deaths each year. Additionally, power plants release over 40 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, a prime contributor to climate change.