The missing energy strategy

The U.S. House of Representatives is moving quickly and with sad predictability toward approval of yet another energy bill heavily weighted in favor of the oil, gas and coal industries. In due course the Senate may give Americans something better. But unless President George W. Bush rapidly elevates the discussion, any bill that emerges from Congress is almost certain to fall short of the creative strategies needed to confront the two great energy-related issues of the age: America’s increasing dependency on imported oil, and global warming, which is caused chiefly by the very fuels the bill so generously subsidizes