2.2.3  Energy

In ‘91 the ATI design team gathered all proposals that had anything going for them for improving the US energy supply. Eighteen major proposals were found and tested, covering the best ideas for expanding energy supplies from coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar-based renewables, exotics, and conservation/efficiency improvements of all kinds. This would allow the public a chance to be more holistic than the necessarily, functionally-divided committees of Congress were. To this end the frame for the evaluation of each proposal was formulated as – "will this proposal get us the energy we need and help the economy and help the environment as well."

The 18 items are listed in Table 1 in rank order of percentage of the total sample who agreed that the proposal will help us get the energy we need and will help our economic competitiveness and job creation (H1). The second number given after each item (H2) is the percentage of the total sample who said this proposal will help us get the energy we need and help the environment as well.

It is quite remarkable that, except the 3^rd ranked, which missed by a hair, an absolute majority said each of the five items in Table 1A would get us the energy we needed, and would help the economy, and would help the environment. We called these triple winners. Four more battery items had considerable support but were not triple winners (see Table 1B.).

The nine energy alternatives that landed in the bottom half, with two exceptions were not even double winners and clearly were perceived as either being pork for the power industry, (particularly 10 through 14), or providing insufficient benefit to rate highly, (particularly 15 through 18).

The Johnston-Wallop National Energy Strategy bill, S. 2166, passed the Senate by an overwhelming 94-4 vote in Feb. '92, with provisions almost diametrically opposed to the public’s preferences. On March 26th, 1992, the ATI team had a presentation for Congress Members on the results of the survey.

Much of the presentation concentrated on the public’s triple winners, the ways of getting the energy we need that will also help our economic competitiveness, help the creation of jobs and help the environment. The proposal most favored by the public, developing renewable energy based on wind, solar, and hydro or water power, received little support in the Senate bill, and the second most favored by the public, new high fuel economy cars, received none at all.

Worse, the Senate bill favored energy proposals that the public had turned down: build new safer nuclear power stations, allow oil development in coastal regions off-shore previously banned, and streamline the approval process for new nuclear power plants.

The New York Times and the Washington Post rejected op-ed submissions from ATI covering these points. 

A newer development is this.  The1992 disconnect was repeated again in the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005.  Thirteen years later!  The oil, coal, nuclear, utility and transport industries continue to trump the power of the people and are stronger than ever under the Republican controlled government of 2005. 

>>> 2.2.4  The Environment

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