La fabuleuse politique énergétique (et énergique) de GW

Nous avons déjà dit quelques mots du passage du discours sur l’état de l’Union de GW sur la réduction de la dépendance US au pétrole, avec injonction de réduire cette dépendance du pétrole du Moyen-Orient de 75% d’ici 2025 et patati et patata. Nous avons mentionné la post-censure qui s’est exercée dès le lendemain.

Voici un élément de qualité de plus à verser à ce dossier anecdotique mais significatif : le récit que fait Paul Krugman des circonstances qui décidèrent l’équipe de GW à lancer cette courageuse initiative.

« ...Here's the story on oil: In the State of the Union address Mr. Bush suggested that “cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol” and other technologies would allow us “to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East.”

» But the next day, officials explained that he didn't really mean what he said. “This was purely an example,” said Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary. And the administration has actually been scaling back the very research that Mr. Bush hyped Tuesday night: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory is about to lay off staff because of budget cuts. “A veteran researcher,” reports The New York Times, “said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol.”

» Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to achieve them? The best guess is that the energy ‘plan’ was hastily thrown together to give Mr. Bush something positive to say.

» For weeks administration sources told reporters that the State of the Union address would focus on health care. But at the last minute the White House might have realized that its health care proposals, based on the idea that Americans have too much insurance, would suffer the same political fate as its attempt to privatize Social Security. (“Congress,” Mr. Bush said, “did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security.” Democrats responded with a standing ovation.)

» So Mr. Bush's speechwriters were told to replace the health care proposals with fine words about energy independence, words not backed by any actual policy. »

Mis en ligne le 6 février 2006 à 08H39