Doing Nothing on Energy

More than 20 months have passed since the oil embargo of 1973, but the U.S. still lacks a comprehensive nation al energy policy. The Democrat-dominated Congress dislikes the Administration's energy platform, but has failed to produce an alternative. Just last week the House trounced the Ways and Means Committee's proposals to boost federal gasoline taxes and slap a tax on low-mileage automobiles. At the same time, the OPEC cartel announced that oil prices would be going up in October (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS).

In large part, the lawmakers' reluctance to vote a tough program of energy conservation stems from the complacency of their constituents: the long lines at the gas pump were short-lived. The immediate problem seems not supply but price. Those high prices, in combination with the recession, have al ready appreciably cut into U.S. oil demand. Why make the voters back home suffer, the legislators' reasoning goes, by enacting unpopular measures that might or might not reduce consumption further?

As the U.S. pulls out of its economic slump, however, the demand for oil will rise, and with it the need for a conservation policy with teeth that would decrease imports and slow down depletion of domestic supplies. Alongside it should come a program -- funded in part by energy taxes aimed at inducing conservation -- to exploit domestic potential to the fullest. To guard against a future embargo, the Government could pur chase a stock pile of oil, with producers submitting sealed bids; that just might stimulate some producing nations to undercut OPEC's prices. The U.S. nonpolicy on energy and congressional inaction are both dangerous and scandalous.

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