THE BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ENERGY - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 15

h e next year, global warming rose to major public prominence, as
the United States signed up to the i rst big international climate agree-
ment at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Yet lit le came of
that thin convention during the next decade. During the eight years of
the Clinton administration, energy remained a third-tier issue. In 1993,
the president at empted to pass a “BTU tax” that would have taxed
consumption of fossil fuels. He lost in a bloodbath—the experience was
credited with a big role in the Democrats' drubbing at the polls the next
November—and at er that he shied away from major confrontation on
energy. With energy cheap, the economy humming, and local pollution
on the decline, Americans and their political leaders had other things
they preferred to focus on.
h e two decades following the intense energy bat les of the 1970s
revealed both sides as bet er at tearing down their adversaries than at
boosting their own positive agendas. Skeptics of mandated conservation
and ei ciency tasted victory in 1985 when new fuel economy standards
for cars and trucks, deemed expensive, unnecessary, and dangerous, were
shelved. Opponents of nuclear power successfully mobilized public fear
following the h ree Mile Island meltdown in 1979, which, together
with rising costs, put the U.S. nuclear industry largely out of business.
Adversaries of of shore oil drilling, buoyed by the Exxon Valdez disaster
in 1989, sought and delivered a ban on new exploration and production
of U.S. coasts. Supporters of small government and skeptics of alterna-
tive fuels nearly dismantled the Department of Energy and succeeded
in starving it of cash. During the 1990s, climate change rose to join the
pantheon of previously contested energy issues, yet once again oppo-
nents of action—this time by an overwhelming ninety-i ve to zero vote
in Congress that preemptively rejected the Kyoto Protocol and, more
importantly, set the tone for domestic U.S. climate policy—made sure
that lit le if anything would be done.

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h e i rst years of the twenty-i rst century would challenge the stasis
quickly. National security was the i rst concern to thrust energy back
into the spotlight. On September 11, 2001, two airplanes struck the