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Washington

AMERICANS are thinking a little harder about oil now that we find ourselves
fighting in the Middle East again. Admittedly, thinking about dependency on
foreign oil is difficult when a gallon of gasoline in the US now costs not much
more than a dollar.

But policymakers in Washington are thinking a little fuarther ahead than the
next fill-up. Environmentalists, meanwhile, are saying that our dependence on
unpredictable, unstable and sometimes-corrupt Middle Eastern governments means
that we should redouble our conservation efforts. Conservatives, however, see
the troubles in the Middle East as reason to drill for more oil, albeit in
friendlier places, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in
Alaska—one of the last pristine wildernesses on American soil.

Then there’s the nuclear industry, which sees oil dependency as a means to
reinvigorate its fortunes. This argument has already moved like an ocean swell
through the Energy Department, which knows that before it revives the industry
it must first solve the problem of where to put all the waste that’s sitting
around at nuclear power plants. The department says it’s time to start putting
the waste in a desert hole called Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Geologists and
citizens of Nevada aren’t so sure.

While this occupies a lot of time and energy in DC, the world’s petroleum
geologists are trying to make themselves heard. Many say the world’s oil supply
is close to peaking. That very likely means supply will start to dwindle even as
demand keeps rising. If they’re right, American politicians face something they
fear more than just about anything—having to forge a real national energy
policy. Quickly.

THESE are troubling times. Although polls show that Americans still have
confidence in the long-term prospects for this country, there is uncertainty
about the short term.

At times like these, people look for reliability. Things they know they can
depend upon. Things that are absolutely guaranteed to occur as predicted.
Fortunately, we have NASA and the International Space Station to provide that
certainty. We’re not talking about the certainty afforded by the laws of
physics, telling us that the station will continue to orbit the Earth. No, the
absolute certainty is that the space station will cost more than NASA officials
have ever said that it would. Once the figure was $8 billion. Then it was
$16 billion. Now the best official estimates put the cost at $30
billion, and even that is likely to be optimistic. An independent panel says
NASA’s current plans would push costs to levels that can’t now be accurately
calculated. Age cannot wither, nor custom spoil NASA’s ability to underestimate
the cost of major programmes.

KANSAS Republican Senator Sam Brownback has emerged as the champion of the
unborn cloned human embryo. During this legislative session, he tried
unsuccessfully to get the Senate to take up an anti-cloning measure that the
House of Representatives had already passed. Then he failed to slip anti-cloning
language into the bill providing money for the Department of Health and Human
Services.

Finally, in early December, he tried to add an anti-cloning amendment to the
railroad retirement bill. If cloning seems irrelevant to railroad retirement,
welcome to the world of the Senate, where any bill can carry any legislation.
The amendment was defeated not because of cloning, but because the cloning
amendment was linked to an amendment that would allow oil drilling in Alaska.
“It looked like a cross between a chicken and a giraffe,” Brownback said, and
joined other senators in killing the package.