Kerry’s Book Hurts The War Against Oil

What is it with John Kerry?

His heart is in the right place. In his life he has walked the walk, not just talked the talk. He is by all accounts an honorable person. Yet when he jumps into any cause that cause somehow goes backward.

He’s done it again with This Moment on Earth.

The book is a sort of history of environmentalism, filled with inspiring stories. He and his second wife Teresa (one of my fictional heroes)  bring the story up to date by profiling modern environmental activists.

Which means they get caught in the same left-right games The War Against Oil just doesn’t need.  Every interview is distracted toward Kerry’s failure in 2004, Bush’s failure in 2007, and the  message of the book gets muddled.

Perhaps it’s right it gets muddled, because the message of the book is political. We can’t afford for The War Against Oil to be political. Instead everyone, regardless of their politics, needs to be convinced that our economic incentives must be re-ordered so that carbon is eliminated as our energy source, worldwide, as soon as possible.

There are many reasons for conservatives to get behind this.
Nationalism for one. Fighting the Muslim hoards, if you prefer. Don’t
like Hugo Chavez? This is the way to take away his leverage, the
subsidy American consumers are giving him every day while filling up
their SUVs. Want to kick Ahmadinejab to the curb, and turn off the electricity in Al Qaeda’s caves? Stop buying the oil which subsidizes them. Even James Inhofe (left) can get behind that. And we need him on our side.

There just ain’t enough us for us to afford a them.

There are actions government can and should take, but these should
not revolve around mandates, around using police powers to force people to
do what we want. They should revolve around market incentives, reducing
the incentives for importing and using hydrocarbons, increasing the
incentives for producing and exporting hydrogen from wind, water, and the Sun.

We need to be telling our universities and our entrepreneurs that if
you come up with new processes and technologies we’ll help you get them
to market quickly, and guarantee that if you can get that new energy to
market at a reasonable cost there will be a market for you to sell into.

Instead Kerry’s book and his argument is about heroic liberals battling
evil conservatives, about knowledge fighting know-nothings, about
activists fighting against big business and government.

That’s just the way to lose this fight. I agree with Kerry on the
merits, and I agree with the environmental activists on the merits.

We just can’t afford to produce any domestic enemies. Not one. We have
to create incentives for everyone, absolutely every American, to get
behind this effort. We need to make it both patriotic and profitable to
get into this game. The measure of our success must be a falling price
for oil, and policies that reject oil regardless of its price.

Everything else is details.