Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

I’ve written about Robert Bryce’ broadsides against “energy independence” before, and I was always juiced to see someone taking down an idea that seems so innocuous, but is just so breathtakingly dumb.  Well, he’s written an entire book, appropriately titled Gusher of Lies.  I probably won’t read it, but still, everyone else should.  While I probably disagree with his pessimism about alternative energy sources, he’s certainly write to say that there’s really nothing wrong with getting our oil from abroad, if we’re going to have an economy run on oil, that is.  The arguments against doing so are just absurd: we have no problem getting other commodities from abroad and it would be just about impossible to actualy withdraw from the global energy market.  The argument that oil = terrorism is just silly – AQ was at its operational high point in the 90s with record-low oil prices.

But while Bryce savages greens for thinking that alternative energy sources are going to save use, there’s some clear common ground that greens can take with him.  Namely that the preferred political alternatives to oil – liquefied coal and  ethanol – are even worse.  Ethanol drives up food prices, wastes our money, is too expensive and is a net positive on emissions.  Liquefied coal is also an expensive boondoggle that is awful for the environment.  Bryce also points out antoher reason ethanol is bad:

Detroit loves ethanol because it can use it to inflate fuel-efficiency ratings on their cars artificially. The mammoth Chevy Suburban, produced as a flex-fuel vehicle capable of burning both ethanol and gasoline, magically boosted its fuel efficiency to 29 miles per gallon from 15, since under federal rules only a vehicle’s gasoline consumption need be factored into the equation. Ethanol, in other words, has allowed American car manufacturers to produce more gas guzzlers and contribute to increased imports of foreign oil.

Basically, if an American car company is supporting a type of alternative fuel, we should all be very wary of it, and ethanol is now exception.  Reading the Times review, it turns out that Bryce isn’t really as hostile to alternative energy sources as he puts on. He thinks that solar could “play a bigger role in meeting energy needs, especially with new technology that transforms infrared light into electricity. Algae look promising as a source of biodiesel”  He also is down with nuclear. And since those are my favorite types of alternative energy (nuclear, algae, solar in that order), it looks like me and Bryce agree on just about everything.

So, yeah, buy the book.