Major Garrett on the politics of lower thermostats

Major Garrett

CNN White House Correspondent Major Garrett explains the thinking behind the latest conservation measures announced Thursday by the White House, including one that orders federal buildings in California to raise their thermostats to 78 degrees during power shortages.

Q: Is the thermostat order just for show?

Garrett: The White House contends that it is not. But there are no shortage of critics in the environmental community and in California -- both Republican and Democrat -- believe much more could and should be done to help California cope with the energy crisis.

Yes, the federal government consumes a share of California's power and conservation measures could, at the very margins perhaps, prevent a Stage II alert from becoming a Stage III alert -- perhaps shorten the longevity of a blackout.

But as far as doing a lot to make power either more available at what Californians would consider more reasonable prices or doing things to dramatically boost supplies, the thermostat and other measures will not touch it.

The Bush White House has made it all too clear, as Spencer Abraham told CNN in an exclusive interview, there will be no price caps for California. Which is what so many in California want at this time -- even if it's just temporary -- to make sure that power is more available and at a more reasonable price.

The White House believes that would distort the markets and encourage people to consume more energy and not conserve more, and that distortion of the markets would cause problems in California and throughout the West, spilling what is now a one-state energy crisis over into many states in the western region.

Q: Have any energy ideas been shot down?

Garrett: The Pentagon has investigated the ability of nuclear-powered naval vessels -- aircraft carriers and submarines -- to see if they could in any way provide even marginal additional energy supplies. And they found a lot of problems with it.

First of all, there is specific legislation that has been passed that prevents activation of nuclear power supplies on those vessels from being activated when they are in major, urban ports of call. There are three principal ones in California: San Francisco Bay area, Long Beach and San Diego. As I understand it, and as was suggested at a Pentagon briefing, the legislation applies to all three areas.

Problem No. 2 is that you can't just activate the nuclear power plant in vessels for just a small amount to where you could probably beat this legislative prohibition. They are either on fully on or they're off and the orders are now that they're off in major metropolitan areas to avoid any potential accidents. So it's not a practicable solution at all.

And there is another sort of promise that the president made Thursday, which is that the federal government would make emergency energy available to California from federal power plants or federal supplies. Well, in my conversation with Abraham, he conceded that that's a very small number of megawatts, at the most maybe 200 at any time -- not enough to alleviate a blackout. And these additional energy supplies would be available only if the governor of California made a specific request and would not dramatically reduce the duration or severity of a blackout.

Q: Where did the thermostat idea come from?

Garrett: This is the faint cardigan-draped ghost of Jimmy Carter returning to the White House. Vice President Dick Cheney made a very strong speech earlier this week that had a lot of rhetorical flourishes that were clearly designed to sort of put a dagger in the heart of Carter-era conspicuous conservation.

This White House, particularly the vice president but also the president, doesn't want to look as if the White House or the entire federal government is shutting off lights and turning up thermostats in what they would acknowledge privately is a futile gesture to get their arms around the energy crisis. Nevertheless, because they are not going to provide what Californians most want -- which is price caps to lower the cost of their power -- they felt that they had to do something.

They know that the energy policy the president presents to Congress in the middle of this month will include very little on the front of conservation and a lot on the increased production of national gas and oil on federal lands, and quite possibly the acceleration of production of nuclear power plants. Because of that, they know they're going to be in for a bruising from the environmental community because it's development-heavy and conservation-light.

I don't want to suggest that this is in any way cynical. However, it looks very tactical in putting conservation and California in the same boat right now to give off the impression that conservation has a legitimate role to play in the federal response and that California is an important state and the Bush White House is trying to do a lot to address its needs.

I've talked to senior administration officials about this and they are quite candid in private that when you eliminate price caps as an option, you have very few other options left. You cannot bring supply online overnight; plants have to be built. And if you're not going to change the way or rates that power suppliers charge California, then there is not much California can do except pay the high prices. And if it can't pay the high prices, then there are going to be shortages and if there are shortages, there will be blackouts. The administration says it's really at the point where conservation is the only thing we have left in California, so we'll put it on the table.

Q: Could California's energy crisis hurt Bush's re-election?

Garrett: The White House knows this is a very dicey political situation. In every conversation I've had with senior administration officials on this topic, they have described the energy crisis in California and the potential for energy crises in other sectors of the country as the trapdoor beneath all of their economic plans.

They are heartened and encouraged that what looked like an economy that might be headed for a recession may have just gone through a sluggish period of lower than expected growth, but not a real recession.

The one factor that could change that very much for the worse is a prolonged energy crisis in California, which after all, is the seventh-largest economy -- not in the United States, but in the world. Silicon Valley is an enormous engine of that economic growth, not just for the state, but for the country, and some would argue, for economic growth throughout the world.

And if Silicon Valley and the rest of the state has to endure what could be 35 days of blackouts, then production is going to decrease, prices are going to go up, layoffs may ensue and there could be a domino effect through California's economy and it could spill out to other parts of the country.

So that is a big political eight ball and the White House knows it. But they are adamant that if they put price caps in place in California, they will distort the market further, cause even greater problems in California, and possibly in the rest of the country, longer term and that will cause them political problems -- not only this summer but next summer. And next summer is a more important political year because that's the summer before the next big election, the election of Congress in November 2002.

Bush calls on federal agencies to cut energy use
May 3, 2001

The White House

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.