Gates Gets Energy

Bill Gates gets energy, almost.

In today's Politico, he addresses the need for a concerted long term energy policy.  He comes closer to the speech that Obama has yet to give, and has possibly lost the opportunity to give.  But Bill, too, has yet to go the distance. He has yet to tell the public what it must know. In the face of dwindling long term supply of fossil fuels and increasing world demand, energy innovation and evolution is not an option but a necessity. Without it, economic and ultimately civil failure is not an option but a probability.

I will allow that Mr. Gates may have pulled back from the brink of brutal candor because of the reticence to be 'alarmist'.  But it's o.k. to shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater if it's burning.  Ask Texans, other than the Governor, of course.

To Mr. Gates' credit, he has approached the subject directly in a top-down, holistic perspective whereas Mr. Obama's approach has been more bottom up, fragmented and stealth.  Mr. Obama's approach is clearly a response to perceived political necessity, but it is not working to needed scale.

Sooner or later, thought leaders such as Mr. Gates, and political leaders such as Mr. Obama are going to have to confront the public as if they are adults, capable of receiving and processing facts.  Only then can we begin to hope to see a Congress of adults prepared to act on them.

It's a slow process, but it's got to start sometime.  How about now?

Onward