What’s irritating is not the need for the candor, which is real, but of the quality of its contents, which is lacking. Namely, the thing eight consecutive presidents have failed to adequately communicate is that ENERGY IS HARD. Yucky oil and Dickensian coal are just stubbornly cheap compared to everything else (particularly, though not only, because the liability for extraction accidents and other environmental damages are not properly priced)…
If there was a magic switch that enlightened leaders could flip to usher in a clean energy utopia, we would have been there three decades ago. There just isn’t, and portraying this lack as some kind of byproduct of “oil industry lobbyists” isn’t “candor,” it’s the opposite. No amount of declaring moonshots or mandating renewables or overstating the clean-energy genius of Communist freaking China can wave away what is a genuinely difficult problem.
You want candor? Stop pretending that making energy more expensive will create five million green jobs, and instead try to sell oilspill-averse Americans on the concept that jacking up prices is an economic hit worth taking even at a time of 10 percent unemployment, and may in some distant future create economic benefits we can’t currently predict. It would be an uphill pitch, but one considerably more honest than continuing to pretend we can smite down Big Oil with the sternness of our words.
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