Jay Hakes has a seven-point plan for cutting our reliance on foreign energy and, as he puts it, “enhancing American influence abroad.” In his 230-age A Declaration of Energy Independence, Bill Clinton’s administrator of the Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy details the history and makes his case.

The background alone is fascinating. He starts in the late 1940s, when the United States became a net exporter of Petroleum for the first time in our history and looks at what government and industry planners were thinking at the time. For instance, in 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower put a quota on imports of foreign oil, setting it at 12.2% of domestic production. These, Hakes teaches, “would prove far from temporary and would have significant impacts on later vulnerability to foreign pressure.”

We also learn that the oil industry ought to stop whining about increases in the gas tax, which almost invariably serve a noble purpose, but for all his knowledge, Mr. Hakes worked for Clinton.

It’s fascinating as he takes us through the Nixon and Ford Administrations as our modern energy policy was in its infancy. He makes the case for how President Carter solved our last energy crisis. His was a “comprehensive energy policy,” one which required “some sacrifice.” Remember: “He noted, for example, that keeping thermostats at 65 degrees during the day and 55 degrees at night could save half the natural gas shortage brought on by that winter’s fridge temperatures.” (And check the air pressure in your tires.)

The narrative: President Reagan, of course, undid the good which Carter had begun, including a drive toward synthetic fuels. Reagan, you see, tried to abolish the Department of Energy and, failing that, steered its spending away from synthetic fuels and conservation to the nuclear weapons we needed to end the greatest threat to the Western world, the Soviet Union. Reagan even took Carter’s solar panels off the White House roof!

Read On…

Hakes discusses the cost of dependence on foreign energy, and he lists the Iraq war as part of that. He talks of the failure of understanding and analysis which went into the planning and early conduct of the war. Hakes faults Paul Wolfowitz for asserting that Iraqi oil would soon pay for the war, explaining that not all money gained by selling oil could be put into the war and reconstruction efforts: “You have to spend money to produce oil, so revenues do not equate to what is available to spend on other things.”

Chapter 5 is devoted to “Fossil Fuels and Global Warming.” There is no way he can make a good case for anthropogenic global warming in a short tome about energy policy, and he doesn’t try; rather, it is accepted as a given, backing that assertion with scientific reports from 1977 and 1979. Because the “projections” were determined to be “likely,” Hakes writes, there is a “strong case for adopting policies to slow what has become a giant experiment with the planet.”

On to Mr. Hakes’s solutions, which are thought-provoking. Each receives its own chapter.

“Solution One: Store Massive Emergency Reserves.” As to be expected from this book, Jay Hakes tells us how the Strategic Petroleum Reserve came to be. He wants the reserve in place in case of a catastrophe in the Middle East, and he proposed increasing its size. Nothing he writes jibes with the latest political proclamations of Nancy Pelosi and House Dems.

“Solution Two: Drive the care of the future.” Hakes wants the government to update its fuel efficiency standards and pass rules accordingly. I like his description of aspects of hybrid car technology, as in:

“These vehicles (like the Toyota Prius) can capture kinetic energy as they slow down (regenerative braking. Hybrid electrics can also shut down during idling, a valuable feature in urban traffic.

“Solution Three: Bring Alternative Fuels to Market.” Hydrogen, Synthetic fuels, Ethanol, Biodiesel.

“Solution Four: Plug into an Electric Future.” He makes a case for rechargeable automobiles and looks at some of the logistics.

“Solution Five: Adopt Energy Taxes Liberals and Conservatives can Like.” I am a conservative, and I do not like any energy tax, as such taxes hinder our nation’s transport, commerce, and growth. Hakes argues that we’ve dug ourselves into this hole of energy dependence, and now we must pay to extract ourselves from it. For why such taxes should appeal to conservatives, Hakes cites former Treasury Secretary William Simon as believing that “the prices paid for gasoline do not fully reflect their environmental and national security costs,” so we must tax to make up the difference. To his credit, Hakes does not skirt this sensitive topic and looks at what should be implemented and strategy for doing so.

“Solution Six: Make Energy Conservation a Patriotic Duty.” Certainly. However, Hakes praises Presidents Ford and Carter for warning us to set back our thermostats and ridicules President Reagan for, he thinks, eliminating talk of conservation from the national dialogue. Aside from this nonsense, Hakes makes a good case himself for conservation being a patriotic duty. It is one I would make as well, albeit with much less skill. Energy conservation should be discussed in the terms Hakes proposes, not in Carter’s dripping-with-doom, sacrifice everything tones. It is not a sacrifice, ultimately, if you are doing it for a cause which is right.

“Solution Seven: Throw Some ‘Hail Marys.’” He wants the government to fund research into new technologies, such as better batteries. He wants new tech for coal consumption which would reduce the production of greenhouse gases. (The private sector, if I’m not mistaken, has been doing this all long and burning coal can be done much more cleanly and efficiently than ever before.) He wants to find new sources for biodiesel fuel.

Hakes closes with a look at what he thinks government and voters must do, which is essentially lead. Of course, this requires smoothing the dichotomy of good politics versus good policy. Interestingly, and astutely, Hakes asks voters to pay as much attention to what Congress does in the way of national policy as to how the President acts. He wants to involve young people in the political process. And, he says, he wants leadership:

We also need a different type of politician. Our third key to energy independence is finding elected officials who dare to lose. If the sole goal of elected officials is securing reelection, they cannot transcend the problem.

I’ll argue that this is a major snag. This is just not how politicians act, though it brings to mind John McCain’s famous support of the military surge in Iraq, saying that he would sooner be defeated in the election than lose the war. Would he do the same for our nation’s energy policy?

Jay Hakes’s Declaration of Energy Independence: How Freedom from Foreign Oil Can Improve National Security, Our Economy, and the Environment is a good, thought-provoking read. You will disagree with parts. (Anthropogenic global warming is one here, as is the notion that the government got us out of the energy crises of the ’70s by telling us to inflate our tires rather than their deregulation of energy prices.) If his goal was to start a serious national dialogue, Jay Hakes’s serious tome could do just that.

You can order the book from Barnes & Nobel, from Amazon.com, or from wherever it is that they sell books.