Bipartisan Energy Policy: The Solution or the Problem?

As I explain in U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure, bipartisan compromise is possible and has led to policy change in the past. However, that change has almost always been bad for the country. Bipartisanship has given us ill-conceived and wasteful programs for synthetic fuels, breeder reactors, “super cars,” windmills, and ethanol. The problem runs much deeper than the current President or the balance of parties in Congress. For the past forty years, U.S. energy policy has been premised on false concepts of markets, government, technology, and history. The basis for this policy paradigm goes something like this:  The… [more]