Energy Policy

In mid-spring, when the prospect of a global warming bill passing Congress seemed like an Al Gore pipe dream, President Obama invited Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) down to the Oval Office. "He realized that this was a very tough bill to get through," Waxman remembers.

Barack Obama portrays his stimulus plan as a quick jolt for the ailing economy and a "down payment" on his priorities as president. But those goals appear to be colliding in at least one key area: energy independence.

Parrying Sen. Barack Obama's attacks on Sen. John McCain's energy proposals in recent days, the McCain campaign has begun to invoke a little cinematic history, labeling Obama the "Dr. No" of energy. Dr. No, for those not up on their James Bond villains, was 007's antagonist in the 1962 film of the same name, the first in the Bond series. But he may be an odd choice if the McCain camp wants to portray Obama as a naysayer on energy innovation. In his own way, Dr.

With the politics of energy shifting as rapidly as gasoline prices, Democrats, led by presidential candidate Barack Obama, are retreating from long-held positions and scrambling to offer distressed voters more immediate relief from spiraling costs. The change has been most striking on the campaign trail, where Obama said in a speech Monday that he would abandon his past position and support tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to quickly cut prices at the gasoline pump.

As the House's new Democratic majority celebrated the completion of their populist 100-hour agenda Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) unveiled the party's next legislative target: an ambitious plan to wean the U.S. from foreign oil and slow global warming.

President Bush's proposals to reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years include more specific and ambitious new goals than in previous White House statements, but they also appear to rely on assumptions about energy markets, politics and technology that some experts say are debatable, and include some apparent contradictions.

President Bush, who frequently jokes about his undistinguished record as a history major at Yale, is devoting considerable time these days to matters scientific. Four weeks ago, he toured a chemical plant in Delaware. Earlier this month he visited a Virginia computer-chip manufacturer. On Wednesday, at a hospital in Tennessee, he watched a video of a surgical robot excising cancerous tissue, prompting his host to ask, "You OK with the blood?"

President Bush peeked under the hoods of hybrid cars and toured two automobile assembly lines Tuesday to urge Americans to buy more alternative fuel vehicles as part of his initiative to reduce gasoline use. "Americans are just getting used to this kind of ... technological breakthroughs, something you're used to," Bush told automobile workers at the Ford assembly plant near Kansas City.

It was a typical oddball Milken conference matchup: longtime Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens sparring with magazine editor and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes in a lively debate on oil prices and energy policy. The result in the packed Beverly Hills ballroom Tuesday? Horror -- and amusement. Pickens drew a mix of groans and quiet gasps with his prediction that U.S. oil prices would top last year's record high of $78.

A MILLION YEARS of compression and heat may someday convert Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) into petroleum, just as it did the other dinosaurs. Unfortunately, by then there may be no humans left to pump a few gallons of Dingell into their Hummers, because the climate change he is so gleefully ignoring may have rendered us extinct.