The left and right and the bottom line.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES - Viewpoint essay

Years and years ago, when I was a fledgling business reporter in Denver and we were covering the frequent fits and starts of Public Service Co.'s ill-fated Fort St. Vrain nuclear generating plant, I got a valuable education in energy policy.

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The newspaper I worked for, then called the Rocky Mountain Journal and part of the background that led to today's Denver Business Journal, was owned by two sharp lawyers a generation in age ahead of me and often quick with a reporter's education.

Basically, lawyer Daniel Lynch informed me, PSCo. was guaranteed a certain return on its investment in infrastructure by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, so, needing more generating capacity in the late 1960s, they opted for a nuclear plant (built 35 miles north of Denver near Platteville) rather than a coal-fired one because the former required twice the investment of the latter.

More guaranteed profits.

At pretty much the same time I got an education in all things political--and there's very little more political than the production and consumption of worldwide energy--from the movie "All the President's Men:" Deep Throat advised, "Follow the money."

So today, in the absence of any kind of national energy policy or corresponding modus operandi on climate change initiatives, and in the presence of $140-per-barrel-crude oil and $4-a-gallon gasoline, let us follow the money.

When oil sold for $30 a barrel and gasoline was so cheap nearly all of us elected to drive the civilian version of Sherman tanks for recreational fun, only committed greenies and oil-stained wildcatters complained about anything. The greenies warned us that fossil fuels were finite and environmentally dangerous, while the wildcatters warned us that fossils fuels from foreigners were finite and that within our own domestic grasp we had the wherewithal to develop our own resources. We essentially ignored them both.

Ah, but follow the money. On the development side, you needed to get oil in the $70-a-barrel range to make drilling development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the Continental Shelf, or to suck oil reserves out of tar sands and shale rock, not only viable from an economic standpoint, but palatable to a wider audience interested in jobs and a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy.

Now that we're double that price for oil, and with the...