Green Options

Unfortunately, my live updates from the Newsweek/American Petroleum Institute panel at Stanford last Thursday were limited to one - mostly because it took me a while to digest all of it, but also because I found that when I was writing, I stopped listening. Fortunately, Maria Surma Manka has been doing yeoman’s work covering the event thus far at Maria Energia and I highly recommend you pay her a visit. With that in mind, I’ll try to add to what she has written, rather than duplicating it.

As I see it, there were several themes threaded throughout the program. And over the next couple of days, I will be addressing each of them in turn. I will first address the politics and policies of our energy future, as raised by the panelists.

Politics & Policy

Although the panel discussion was not exactly intended to center on politics and policy, the discussion was continually being pulled in that direction. It seemed that nearly everyone had something to say about the role of government. And while there may have been clear political and ideological divisions amongst the panelists, they all generally agreed that the federal government has, up to this point, pretty much dropped the ball when it comes to leading the way with effective  energy policy programs.