Heating up at last?

摘要

Even though he was once a Texas oil-man, energy has so far been something, of a disaster for George Bush. It has brought him nothing but grief from virtually every side of the debate. Even world oil markets have turned against the president: prices have soared in his first term. Mr Bush's best known energy decision remains brusquely pulling out of the Kyoto protocol-a deeply flawed climate-change treaty that the Senate would never have accepted. But most of the administration's attention has centred on something else Mr Bush announced soon after taking office: America's supposed "energy crisis". The idea that America can ever strive for any form of energy independence is bogus: though it sits on just 3% of the world's oil reserves, it consumes a quarter of global oil production. But Mr Bush asked Dick Cheney to come up with a new energy policy. The task-force the vice-president set up, what with his ties to Halliburton and his unnecessary secrecy, soon turned into a public-relations fiasco.