Bush: Pusher-In-Chief

George Bush stated that the United States is adicted to oil in his State of the Union address. The Economist, perhaps being upset that Bush didn’t give The Economist credit for their previous cover story on this problem, has some unflattering descriptions of Bush’s energy policy.

The Economist labels Bush “the pusher-in-chief” in their analysis of his energy policy:

The problems with Mr Bush’s speech are the same ones that undermined his energy policy, which was passed into law as the Energy Act last year. That grotesque law handed out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to every imaginable source of energy. But it did nothing to promote carbon trading; it did not mention carbon taxes; it had no tightening of vehicle fuel-economy rules.

In short, Mr Bush is still avoiding most of the regulations that might actually encourage the market to ditch dirty technologies in favour of clean ones. And he is still avoiding any attempt to make Americans pay the true cost of the energy they guzzle. Until that happens, he is firmly on the side of the pusher, not the addict.