Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the NY Times has taken a break from writing a book (he has been on leave from writing columns for many months).

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

So we see from Mr. Friedman’s introduction that this is an issue both parties, to some extent, are getting wrong.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Here he shows what our policy might look like if it were setup for national progress and sets up the reader to see what it actually looks like:

The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

And:

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

There is no easy fix for this problem, but by taking the tax credits from the oil industry and giving them to renewable energy industries, we could have made renewable energy all the more competitive as the cost of oil skyrockets.

Take a look at where politicians are aligned with policy and with industries. Mr. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have very close ties to the oil industry, so it comes as no surprise that they would want to keep the tax credits for Big Oil.

Shame on Senator Clinton for not having better foresight past her election campaign. Cheers for Senator Obama for staying strong and sticking to a sound public policy regarding the federal excise tax on gasoline.

But we have to ask, why does an industry that is seeing great profits, the oil industry that is, deserving of large tax credits? This is especially disheartening to watch while cleaner alternative energy (wind and solar in particular), which could create new jobs, opportunities, and an improved national envirohuman impact but is still on the border between profit and loss, has lapses or feared lapses in credits.

This is hardly comforting to investors who would like to get into cleaner energy but fear it is risky without the same guaranteed tax credit as seen in some other nations.

To read Mr. Friedman’s entire column, go here.

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