Does McCain's Energy Policy Point to a Cabinet Post for Cheney?

He's way too unpopular to consider for the second slot on the McCain ticket, but is a cabinet post for Dick Cheney as energy czar out of the question if the Republicans prevail in November?

After the roll out last week of McCain's drill-drill-drill energy policy, it's pretty likely. Backed by the full might of the Republican message machine, McCain's energy proposals were lifted wholesale out of the Dick Cheney energy strategy that has guided US policy since 2001.

It's the policy that was developed by National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), a group created by President Bush two weeks after he first took office and placed under Cheney's direction, whose secret deliberations have been a source of controversy ever since.

It's the policy that found expression in the Energy Act of 2005, passed by Congress. And it's the policy described concisely on the web site of the Strategic Unconventional Fuels Task Force, a group within the Department of Energy, created by the Energy Act of 2005.

In its official documents, The Task Force spells out what the fossil future is supposed to look like according to the energy security gospel of Dick Cheney. At the top of the list of things needed to develop energy sources for the future? Development of the oil shale deposits in the American West.

That's exactly what McCain proposed last week.

So if elected, why wouldn't he provide a cabinet appointment to the dark visionary and architect of America's endless fossil future?

Cheney ain't the decider, but he's certainly the go-to guy.

The way McCain orchestrated the roll-out of his energy policy is a good indication of how firmly he's fallen into the Cheney bear hug.

The roll-out began with a scare tactic to soften up the public -- the spreading of a false rumor that China is drilling for oil off the coast of Florida – in the territorial waters of fellow communists in Cuba.

If the Chinese are drilling in our waters, why shouldn't we? That was precisely the point of an uber-masculine Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled Drill! Drill! Drill! that followed punctually in the disciplined message orchestration. It supplied the mantra for the McCain energy policy and rallied the faithful.

That set the stage for McCain to announce his policy in Houston last week, where he called for oil drilling in US coastal waters and for the development of US oil shale in the American West.

And lest there be any doubt that McCain was donning the mantle and embracing the legacy of the Bush administration, the President also issued his own statement in the Rose Garden, the cherry on top. Here's a link to the fact sheet of what Bush called for. Top 2 items? Drilling offshore and development of oil shale.

There's nothing new in this energy policy, although McCain and Bush tried to sell it as a brand new cure for high gas prices. It's neither brand new, nor a cure. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) -- the arm of the government responsible for official energy statistics -- said so.

It was merely the endless fossil future repackaged to suit this moment of $4 gas, which everybody knows is not going away. But maybe pain at the pump and fear of communists in our waters might pave the way for wishful thinking that relies on development of oil shale and other unconventional fuels. And continued denial of global warming.

That's squarely where the future of the oil industry rests. Take a look at this organization chart of the Strategic Unconventional Fuels Task Force and you'll see how this effort is being managed out of the Department of Energy's Office of Petroleum Reserves.

Reporting into that office are the three working groups of the Task Force: Oil Shale and Tar Sands; Enhanced Oil Recovery and Heavy Oil; Coal-to-Liquid Fuels. It gets hard to breathe just reading the names of those three working groups.

And here is what it says in the Executive Summary of the report the Task Force prepared for the President and Congress:

The days of cheap oil are likely over. As discovery and production of conventional oil becomes more difficult and costly..... the world and ur nation must now begin a transition to the next most economic and energy efficient set of energy resources. As it may take 20 years or more to achieve an industry capable of producing significant volumes of unconventional fuels, urgent action to initiate the transition is needed.

Our nation is endowed with a wealth of resources that can be converted to fuels for transportation, home heating, and other uses. These include coal, heavy oil, and oil producible by carbon dioxide enhanced recovery....

Oil sands development success in the Province of Alberta, Canada provides a laudable example of industry, government, and stakeholder collaboration that could be emulated.....

The oil sands "a laudable example that could be emulated?" OMFG. The full report is available here, and it makes for chilling reading.

It is the Cheney blueprint of the fossil future, now embraced by McCain. It calls for massive government support for a 20 year project to develop these carbon-heavy unconventional fuels.

Solar, wind, geothermal -- weren't those supposed to be the unconventional fuels of the future? Not in the vision of Dick Cheney, now embraced by John McCain.

If elected, who will he turn to help him manage his energy policy?

(For more, see What Should McCain do about Cheney? on Politico, and McCain on Whether Cheney Might Serve in His Administration: "Hell, Yeah" on Think Progress.)

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