A Past President's (Energy Policy) Advice to Obama: Act With Haste

[jpak]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122894725018995935.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

ATLANTA -- Almost three decades later, Jimmy Carter recalls vividly what it was like trying to get Americans to turn down their thermostats and kick the oil habit.

By most measures, the Carter years were the high-water mark for energy reform, but the movement has dwindled as oil prices dropped in the 1980s.

"It was like gnawing on a rock," the former president says.

Now President-elect Barack Obama is heading to Washington with a set of energy goals as ambitious as Mr. Carter's back in 1976. He promises to free the country from "the tyranny of foreign oil" and to save "our planet for our children." He's calling for a "spirit of service and sacrifice," and promoting hybrid cars and wind and solar power.

But Mr. Obama must now champion his $150 billion energy plans in the face of a sinking economy and oil prices that have fallen 70% since their record mid-summer high. Forces like these have killed at least four similar presidential efforts in the past. Already, falling energy prices and the credit crisis are laying waste to scores of alternative-energy projects, from huge wind farms in Texas to biodiesel plants in Mr. Carter's home state of Georgia.

<more>

[Fovea]

1. Prices are down on every commodity.

'Gotta sell' pricing hit a wheat farmer I know fairly bad at a point where prices were historically good.