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NEWS ANALYSIS: Bush, Rivals Don't Dare Ask Public to Make Sacrifices in Energy Crunch

By RONALD BROWNSTEIN, Times Political Writer

WASHINGTON--Amid their looming conflicts on energy policy, President Bush and his critics appear to have reached agreement on an unlikely point: Neither side is preparing to ask for significant sacrifices from the public to respond to rising prices and squeezed supplies.

In the energy policy blueprint it will release next week, the administration is expected to present enhanced production as the key to easing the energy crunch. Democrats and environmentalists, in response, are stressing measures to prod manufacturers to design more energy-efficient products, from cars to air conditioners.

But neither side is yet suggesting that ordinary Americans--whose average energy consumption has increased steadily over the last 15 years--may have to scale back lifestyles that increasingly include mammoth sport-utility vehicles, dawn-to-dark home computer use and new houses 50% larger than a generation ago.

In fact, as the debate over Bush's plan approaches, both sides are working overtime to insist that their solutions will allow Americans to use virtually as much energy as they want--without sacrifice.

In a striking declaration earlier this week, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer portrayed unconstrained energy use as virtually an American birthright. "That's a big no," he answered when asked if Bush believes Americans need to curtail their energy use. "The president believes that's an American way of life and that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life."

More surprising, environmentalists mobilizing to fight Bush's plan are sending a similar message. "We don't need to sacrifice a lifestyle in order to save energy," says Dan Becker, director of the global warming and energy program for the Sierra Club.

This improbable consensus reflects a deeper political calculation shaping both sides' response to the energy challenge. After a decade in which American life on almost every front--from energy to jobs to federal revenues--has been defined by abundance, politicians have grown extremely reluctant to confront voters with hard choices and unpleasant alternatives.

The big question is whether either side's preferred solutions can resolve the long-term energy problem without forcing Americans to face at least some of those hard choices. Compared to most issues, public opinion about the energy debate is unformed, analysts in both parties agree. That's largely because few Americans have thought much about the problem since the last gas lines disappeared 20 years ago.

"People aren't settled on what are the causes of the problem, let alone what are some of the solutions," says pollster Mark Baldassare, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.

As the struggle to shape public opinion begins, the central division is likely to exist between Bush's emphasis on new production and the Democratic/environmentalist push for greater reliance on renewable energy and conservation. But that loud dispute threatens to obscure the remarkable convergence on an equally important point: To the extent either side sees conservation as part of the solution, they portray it primarily as something done for consumers rather than by consumers.

White House aides say Bush isn't likely to completely ignore the value of individual conservation; the Democratic energy alternative includes a provision that could eventually compel the government to discourage the use of vehicles with poor fuel efficiency. But overall both sides are promising minimal disruption--a stark contrast to the admission by California officials that higher prices are needed to deter electricity consumption.

Indeed, it's telling that, instead of discussing conservation, both Bush and his critics are increasingly talking about energy efficiency. That formulation implies engineering strategies rather than lifestyle changes to reduce consumption. "With technology, there's no reason why . . . you've got to live in the dark, turn out all the lights, don't enjoy the things that our modern society brings you," Vice President Dick Cheney said this week.

Looming over these political and rhetorical calculations is the ghost of President Carter, whose administration was plagued by repeated energy shocks in the late 1970s. When Carter unveiled his comprehensive energy plan just months after taking office in 1977, his message hit a strikingly different note: The crisis, Carter said, "will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in every life."

Behind those words, Carter offered an agenda bristling with thorny ideas to discourage energy use: new taxes on gas-guzzling cars, automatic taxes on gasoline triggered when consumption rose too fast, utility reforms that increased costs for the heaviest users.

But Congress rejected almost all these ideas, focusing instead on tax incentives to encourage more efficient energy use, and Carter's efforts to encourage voluntary conservation (like turning down the heat in winter) became a lasting symbol of weakness and ineffectuality.

Today strategists on both sides agree that the public is even less inclined to sacrifice. And in that climate, neither Bush nor Democrats are focusing on a paradox central to the energy riddle: While most products have grown more energy efficient over the past generation, energy use per person in America is still rising.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1970s oil shocks, per capita U.S. energy use declined by roughly 8% from 1973 through 1985. But as the memory of those disruptions faded, energy use per person increased almost 10% from 1985 through 1999, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

On several fronts, it appears the demand for bigger energy-intensive products is offsetting the efficiency gains of improved technology. Take homes. In an April study, the National Assn. of Home Builders concluded that because of such innovations as greater use of insulated windows and more efficient furnaces, new homes today use energy twice as efficiently as they did 30 years ago. But despite those improvements, the overall trend among new homes is toward greater energy consumption.

In the first years after the 1970s oil shock, average fuel efficiency for all passenger vehicles in America steadily increased, peaking at 25.9 miles per gallon in 1987. Since then average fuel efficiency has declined, dropping to 24 mpg in 2000, the lowest it has been since 1980, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Some analysts think both sides are selling the public short by exempting them from sacrifice in the growing energy debate. "Americans have heard messages about changing their ways and have been accepting when it comes to conservation," says Baldassare.

But the dominant instinct is to target other causes--and solutions-- for the challenge, with Bush blaming environmental restrictions that have blocked drilling or new power plant construction and Democrats pointing fingers at oil companies, car manufacturers and the administration's links to both.

"Nobody wants to be in a position of telling the American public they can't have what they want," acknowledges one top Bush political advisor.

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

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