There are indeed critical issues being overlooked in the current energy discussion. By focusing so much attention on the climate change component of energy policy, issues like jobs, energy prices, and the development of the full spectrum of energy resources available to us are being overlooked to the detriment of our economy. What we need is a comprehensive, balanced and long term approach to energy policy – one that looks at ways to not only to control climate change, but also to lower prices, create jobs and build the US economy.

The fact of the matter is that for decades to come our global economy will rely on oil and natural gas for the vast majority of our energy needs, while we continue to work towards developing a diverse energy portfolio that includes wind hydro and nuclear (among others). To get there from here, we need to focus on a sensible and balanced US energy policy that includes provisions for access to our offshore and onshore oil and gas supplies. Failure to do so is costing this country millions of jobs and putting us as significant competitive disadvantage relati

In the U.S. and in the larger world, if we continue to deal only “with a host of hot button issues” through little cubby holes of legislation and funding, the natural systems upon which our own lives depend will ultimately be lost.

As we have seen in Chesapeake Bay, trying to address one environmental threat at a time is not sufficient to rescue an individual ecosystem let alone to restore the network of healthy ecosystems needed to sustain our environment and our economy. We must solve the range of problems affecting whole watersheds, landscapes and ecosystems in a more comprehensive way. The Administration, Congress and other groups are beginning to recognize this with new and long-needed initiatives:

• A Presidential Memorandum issued on June 12 set in motion inter-agency planning for the coordinated governance of marine waters and the creation of a system to allocate the uses of coastal waters to protect natural features while allowing for economic activities at the right locations. The House Natural Resources Committee is proposing a permanent Ocean Trust Fund derived from offshore leasing to pay for the coastal restoration and management required to carry out such plans.
  
• Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar, has called for a “Treasured Lands Program” that would restore and conserve the nation’s most important landscapes for their multiple benefits—places, one would think, like Greater Yellowstone, the Colorado River and the Northern Forests of New York and New England. While the Secretary has not yet announced a specific program, a group of conservationists convened by the University of Montana has suggested a national landscape competition in which landowners, state and federal agencies and non-profit organizations come together to nominate their own regions to receive Federal incentives to protect working landscapes, water resources and public lands for all their benefits.
  
  
• The House Subcommittee and Water Resources and the Environment is considering a bill that would facilitate planning for whole watersheds to deal with sources of pollution, demands for water, operation of dams and river restoration needs in a unified and long term way.
  
  
• The Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Law Institute will soon release a whitepaper that argues for altering the way environmental mitigation is used. TNC and ELI argue for an ecosystem-based approach to avoiding the most environmentally sensitive places in the development of energy and other infrastructure and in deciding where and how to compensate for damage that cannot be avoided.
  
• And, in the climate change legislation itself, there are provisions to help ecosystems adapt to a changing climate. While significantly underfunded, this section of the House bill calls for coordinated planning among agencies and targeted investments needed to avoid the collapse of ecosystems in the face of changing precipitation patterns, temperature increases and sea level rise.

When taken together, these initiatives represent a remarkable trend in environmental and natural resource policy—looking at natural systems in a holistic way and developing plans for the future that span agency and political boundaries.

These are neither hot button issues nor the central strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but one hopes there will be the time and energy to advance these new ideas because they recognize that the welfare of humans and the welfare of natural systems are, in today’s world, completely intertwined and that the future of America’s environment depends upon our finding ways to create a framework of healthy land and water that will sustain human needs while providing habitat for the full range of native plants and animals.

Let me suggest two issues: 1) natural gas; and 2) siting renewable facilities on federal and private lands.

Re natural gas, prices are below $3 per Mcf for first time since 2002. Storage has topped 3 Tcf, the traditional end of season number. No one has considered the effects of this fundamental change in natural gas supply and economics on the rest of the energy market. How will this affect the competitiveness of renewable electricity production? Shouldn't role of natural gas in low-carbon economy be reconsidered, as well as incentive structure for alternative energy supplies designed at a time when natural gas prices were much higher and supply was thought to be much smaller?

On #2, Secretary Salazar has been leading a charge to improve siting of renewable facilities on federal lands, but issues are complex and there is much to be done. Should/could Congress do more to help? Also, we should not lose sight of issues with siting renewable facilities on private lands previously used for other purposes, such as agriculture. Where federal laws are implicated by such development (e.g., endangered or threatened species), renewable development may be blocked completely, even though it seems preferable to site renewable energy facilities on previously disturbed private lands rather than pristine public lands.

There are many backburner issues, and some issues that people just may not see even though they are right in front of them. For example, most of the oil that spills into the lakes, rivers, and oceans around and in our country are not from industrial spills or from Exxon-Valdez type accidents, but from the runoff from cars, the old oil from oil changes in households and the like that goes down the drain, small spills from watercraft and aircraft, and so forth. The public and political leaders focus on the oil tankers, offshore oil production, and industrial sources whereas they should be focusing on how we transport our people and goods, and how such transport vehicles are maintained. (Another argument for moving to alternative fuels automobiles may be found here, but I do not see much written or talked about on this.) Some of the clunkers that became more famous with the “Cash for Clunkers Program” are some of the bigger overall sources of these seemingly minor oil spills that add up over many cars.

The next time you drive your car on an interstate on a long trip with the family or with some friends look at the oil patches along the way, most particularly those that are washing off in the rains. Then think of all of the 250 million plus cars on the road in the US. One might also consider all of the people in the country who still change their oil in the backyard, and may not be exactly following the regulations and laws about how to safely get rid of that oil, much like many people may be disposing of their batteries and other toxic substances in their trash.

Looking at such diffuse sources of pollutants one might also consider the way we deal with pesticides and indoor pollution in homes in particular. Offices and other commercial buildings have their problems and a good deal has been said about that, but household air pollution is something we should look into much more.

We spend much of our lives in our homes, but I suspect most people do not understand the problems of indoor air pollution that might be found in these homes. We are surely much better off than in some developing countries where wood-burning stoves cause millions of respiratory infection deaths (it is one of the top sources of mortality in Africa), but we still face air pollution threats within our homes that maybe few can grasp.

One could go to the American Lung Association to read more about some of the respiratory problems that could result from indoor air pollution: http://www.lungusa.org/. The EPA has some very good web pages on indoor air pollution: http://epa.gov/iaq/. One could look at these for just a start.

Many of our political and thought leaders seem to focus on the “big”, such as the industrial giants like Exxon-Mobil, the coal industry, and the chemical industry as sources of air and water pollutants. This makes “good” politics and gets the constituents wound up. However, I suspect that many political constituencies would be very pleasantly surprised to have powerful politicians and others begin to talk about the home front, and the realities of how the small problems add up to big measures in pollution and in health issues in this country.

Another one of those small-to-big issues is the production of what is euphemistically called “municipal waste”, otherwise known as trash and garbage. Americans produce over 260 million tons of it each year. We compost a lot of it, recycle a lot of it, yet use very little of it to produce energy. One can produce methane (natural gas) from such waste. Bioreactor landfills are a possibility here. There are also chances to increase our waste-to-energy production by burning garbage in incinerators that turn turbines to produce electricity. Japan and China are way ahead of us on this. Wheelabrator Technologies, Inc. is an example of an American Company working on these issues: http://www.wm.com/wm/services/waste-to-energy.asp. Waste-to-energy is one of the most underutilized sources of energy production we have in this country. It is also a way to help control our landfill and waste management problems, and a way to help curtail greenhouse gases. This may be the one of the ultimate backburner issue for both environmental and energy issues.

Are other critical environmental and energy issues being put on the back burner because of climate change? Of course they are. Regardless of your individual beliefs regarding climate change, there is no denying that it is a hot-button political issue creating large political divides. As the general public becomes more aware of the debate over legislation, the more entrenched both sides have become. If you observe polling data over the last few years, the public wants immediate action on water and air pollutants other than CO2 – legislation that will not face a stymie of harsh opposition and will provide real, calculable benefits to our nation and its citizens.

Our nation has a public infrastructure crisis, not just with our highways, but with our water and sewer systems as well as our locks, dams, and levies on our country's waterways. I was told years ago by an environmentalist whom I respect, although I did not always agree with, that more lives were saved during the last century by our public water works projects than all of the other environmental statutes combined. While that might seem hard to quantify, we must not forget how many cities and areas of our country suffered from routine flooding and large-scale loss of life every year before the start of those projects. Thankfully today when an event as horrific as Katrina happens, it shocks us all as something out of the ordinary when it used to be fairly routine. However, as a country we have not been making the necessary investments to keep all of our infrastructure up to date. In addition to the public works projects, we have a backlog of hundreds of billions of dollars needed to replace and maintain our drinking water and sewage systems. While proponents of the stimulus package this year tout its investments in infrastructure, less than 7% of the nearly $800 billion was allocated towards infrastructure, a paltry sum compared with the estimated costs of restoring our nation’s aging transportation and water networks. At the same time the EPA estimates the water system backlog is over $500 billion alone.

On the air pollutant side, further reducing the emissions of NOx, SO2, and mercury has been held up by the debate surrounding CO2. If the Bush Administration had successfully enacted its Clear Skies legislation, we would already be seeing a reduction in these three pollutants. The Clinton Administration tried to force reductions through the existing Clean Air Act's New Source Review (NSR) enforcement program, to mixed results. As a side note, the NSR program shows how difficult and unwieldy it will be to try and regulate CO2 under the existing framework of the Clean Air Act.

Washington’s current preoccupation with passing climate change legislation to mandate immediate, drastic reduction in U.S. emissions masks a serious disconnect with reality. To meet the mandated emission reduction level in the Waxman-Markey bill, Americans would have to substantially curtail use of traditional energy sources in just a little over 10 years. Yet, the Energy Information Administration projects that our energy use over that time period will grown by about 25% greater -- with 80% of that energy coming from fossil energy.

The inconsistency between this careful analysis and the House’s legislative mandate illustrates the current disconnect between policy and reality. Moreover, this information highlights how -- since traditional energy sources will continue to play a vital role in the global economy for the foreseeable future -- America should produce as much of it domestically as we can.

Oil imports continue to rise while politicians continue to rail against them on national security grounds. Despite this lip service, many lawmakers do little to encourage increased domestic production. However, research has shown that the main opposition to tapping these resources -- alleged environmental concerns -- are largely bogus.

Forty years of safe production has been enough to convince the majority of Americans that offshore drilling can be done safely, especially given the tremendous advances in technology during that time. There is a proven record that oil and gas can be produced in challenging environments in an environmentally safe manner.

In addition to reducing the growth in imports, increased oil and gas production would produce domestic economic benefits in a large number of states. Oil field worker are high wage workers. The material for platforms and needed supplies would come from American firms here at home and the required support services would also come from firms employing U.S. workers. Increased oil and gas production not only reduces dependence on foreign sources but U.S. dollars would be invested here where they can aide our economic recovery.

Rhetoric and preconceived notions that are not borne out by the facts are imposing an unnecessary economic and energy burden on our nation. The time has come to recognize that we do not have to choose between increased energy and challenging but realistic environmental standards. We can have both.