Schweitzer for secretary of energy

By Warren Brown

WASHINGTON — Whoever becomes the next president of the United States should name Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, D, a politician of remarkable vision and common sense, as secretary of the Department of Energy.

Schweitzer, who gave one of the most fundamentally important speeches at last week’s Democratic National Convention, gets it.

He understands that the most important issue facing our nation is not the economy. It is not when or how we will get out of Iraq. Instead, it is why we blundered into Iraq in the first place. It’s energy, stupid.

It’s energy — how we get and use it, where we get it, its continued availability, in what form and at what cost.

Talk is cheap

All the pretty talk from Democrats about “change” and all the macho strutting from the Republicans on the stage of “national security” mean nothing to a nation bereft of the fuel needed to power its economic, social, political and military ambitions.

What is refreshing about Schweitzer, a Democrat with a demonstrated willingness to work with anyone from any party to help stabilize America’s energy footing, is his frankness on the issue. A rancher by trade, Schweitzer knows bull when he sees and hears it, which is why he smartly has eschewed the nonsense of choosing one alternative-fuel policy; adopting one single-minded strategy, such as more drilling for Alaskan or offshore oil; or, for that matter, pretending that we in the United States can free ourselves from an oil-dependent economy anytime soon.

Schweitzer, instead, asks that we — all of us, consumers and corporations, voters and politicians — change our national mind-set about energy, that we begin making concerted efforts to conserve it when and where it can be, and that we get serious about understanding that oil is a finite resource, with all that means about future availability and pricing.

Stark prediction

“We face a great new challenge, a world energy crisis that threatens our economy, our security, our climate and our way of life,” Schweitzer said in his address to the Democratic National Convention. “And until we address that crisis, our problems will only get worse.”

Rising U.S. gasoline prices constitute just one of those problems, and it might not be the most troubling one.

“Right now, the United States imports about 70 percent of its oil from overseas,” Schweitzer said. “At the same time, the billions of dollars we spend on all that foreign oil seem to wind up in the bank accounts of those around the world ... openly hostile to our values and our way of life. This costly reliance on fossil fuels threatens America and the world in other ways, too. CO2 emissions are increasing global temperatures, sea levels are rising, and storms are getting worse.”

The country needs a multi-faceted approach to solve the problem, Schweitzer said. That means pursuing alternative fuels and energy sources wherever they are most appropriate and can most effectively be used to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It means drilling for more oil in places such as the Bakken Formation — an estimated 200,000 square miles of rock spread throughout Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan beneath which some geologists think large reservoirs of shale oil rest. And it means implementing federal policies to use energy more wisely — for example, in cars that get more miles per gallon.

Pick a direction

There has been much talk in the campaign season about moving America in another direction, fixing what supposedly is broken. And during last week’s meeting of Democrats, there was a lot of hullabaloo over whether the backers of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would bury the hatchet and support Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., her successful rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. We voters should not be taken in by such foolishness.

The issue, again, is energy. We should pay attention to Schweitzer’s words. We should take them seriously. And we should use them in determining who is best suited to sit in the Oval Office in this moment of need for a strong, sensible, workable national policy to fuel our future.