Sorry for the pun, but the appointment of Dr. Stephen Chu as Secretary of Energy will be big news in the War Against Oil.
No agency in government is so controlled by the industry it supposedly regulates as the Energy Department. The place is just crawling with oil company executives. Many will be blown out in the transition, but that still leaves the "protected" employees, civil servants who are right now "burrowing" into the bureaucracy specifically to thwart change.
Thus it's important to have people alongside Dr. Chu who know how the game is played. And this is the beautiful thing. The Lawrence Berkeley Lab Dr. Chu now runs is a Department of Energy agency. Chu, unlike anyone else Obama could have chosen, is already an insider.
Best of all is the gravitas thing. I can't remember ever seeing a Nobel Laureate in the Cabinet. (Can you?) Having won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, Dr. Chu brings credibility to his task no other possible appointment could match.
There is much to do.
The most important task before the new Secretary is to lay out a road map of exactly what is possible in terms of the War Against Oil. What avenues of research hold the most promise, what promises are nonsense, what needs to be done by government and what is close enough to fruition to be done privately.
The second important task, of course, is to redirect the agency away from hydrocarbons, and toward renewable sources. This is where the good Doctor is going to need some lieutenants with serious government chops, to clear out the burrowers, to zero out projects that are useless in terms of the War Against Oil, and to deliver what the new industry really needs to ramp up production.
Third, of course, is to get on TV and give us the same feeling of urgency you get when you listen to, say, Al Gore, who most surely gave a nod of assent to this nomination. This is something Dr. Chu has been working on for a decade, ever since he entered government service. I feel certain he will be much better on TV than you think he will.
And getting on TV, for this particular official, is a big part of the job. With oil prices currently on the floor there is every temptation to shelve alternatives, as was done in the early 1980s. Dr. Chu's job is to, in Nathan Bedford Forrest's words, "keep up the skeer," to maintain the public focus on the job at hand, at what they can do, and at what we must all do.
Frankly I could not be more excited if Al Gore himself had dropped into this job. While Chu plays "Mr. Inside," pushing the new agenda, Gore can be "Mr. Outside," directing venture funds in promising directions (and making a ton of money for himself and his descendents in the process). This will maintain Gore's power over the long run much more than any government job could, and giving Gore economic power should be a big part of the War's game plan.
The War Against Oil has well and truly begun!
