Will Jeb Bush be "Disruptive" in 2016?

"I know what I need to know ... to run for President" - Jeb Bush.

Setting the Stage

Today, a good friend from school invited me to a speaker series to which he had a spare ticket. The event was in Oakland, California and was entertained by the moderate conservative, former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. It's been contemplated for some time that he will run for President in 2016 and this night's speech, came with an interesting revelation.

I don't want to talk to much about Bush and his past, but there was one thing in particular that I did want to relay. Something he said, and something he didn't say. Something about the power of "Disruption". His speech on this night, focused on Education and Immigration. Both subjects have obviously been hot topics in media, and Bush himself has been a stark opponent and foe of the teachers' unions, something he somewhat reluctantly had to admit at a full Paramount Theatre in "liberal Oakland".

"He opposed the Kyoto Protocol which would have been the largest disruption to an ailing oil & gas economy one could ever have imagined."

Good Ideas

A key word of this speech was "Disruption". According to Bush, his work as a governor had allowed him to disrupt a dysfunctional educational system to boost its performance, and he argued that getting rid of teachers unions was a natural part of a changing and disruptive market economy. Government and Unions: Bad.

So "Disruption" is the way forward.

Driverless cars, Bush mentioned. "I don't know if you have this around here" he proclaimed, and went on to describe the concept of ride-sharing and the wonders it could entail: Billions saved in highway construction, lower fuel consumption and thousands of lives saved from - arguably - fewer traffic accidents(!) As he said: Cab companies wont be happy, "but who would you rather root for". Positive change and new ideas or a group of disgruntled cab drivers, hiding behind regulations and legislation concerned with losing market share? Asked and answered.

Disruption is good.

Here's my beef.

I sat with my friend on the balcony, in this marvelous Art Deco building that is the Paramount Theatre, and listened to what came across as an extremely moderate position, and then noted that even though Bush mentioned energy at the beginning of his speech as an "important issue", we never got to it. Why? I was waiting for that moment when he would take it up, but it never came.

"He's an oil man" said my friend. Oil. There it was.

Disruption

In the middle of Jeb Bush's clever, sometimes even left-leaning argument for free-market capitalism, improved incentive structures and disruption of over-regulated markets. A giant elephant, seemingly ignored, in the room. A mountain of an omission the size of the Florida everglades. What about oil? Is Oil not a "Disgruntled cab company" hiding behind a wall of regulations and institutionalized practices that has been built over the last one hundred years?

Oil man, Jeb Bush. Climate change skeptic, in favor of "national energy policy ... increasing supplies of oil and gas inside the United States", who despite his voiced support for restoring US coastlines, opened the lid on increased exploratory drilling in the Mexican Gulf. Jeb, who is still actively supporting his son, and active oil man, George P. Bush in seeking office also endorsed GOP candidate and Keystone XL-supporter Mitt Romney and before that, the "Drill-baby-drill" McCain nomination. Jeb Bush has called repeatedly for incentives for more use of natural gas in transportation and called the environmentally criticized natural gas extraction method,  hydrofracking, the "coolest dang thing that’s ever happened in the last 10 years".

In fewer words. Jeb Bush is willing to disrupt the teachers unions and the cab companies and apparently is going at public transportation with his driverless car analogy, but nothing so far suggests that this man would in any way shape or form, help to tear down the wall of oil barrels, keeping US in the shade.

Would he ever be in favor of disrupting the billions of dollars in direct and indirect incentives for the oil & gas industry? He opposed the Kyoto Protocol, which would have been the largest disruption to an ailing oil & gas economy one could ever have imagined. "No thank you", Kyoto.

New ideas

How about disrupting the regulations of hundreds of electric utilities in the US resisting reform of solar energy-interconnection rules, keeping power generation in the hand of the centrally controlled utilities. How about disruption of tax-regulation that has for decades favored fossil fuel projects over renewable energy projects? (Master Limited Partnerships is one example). How about disruption of the common practice of essentially providing free federal insurance to nuclear power plants by limiting the maximum liability in case of disaster. How about supporting the taxation of externality costs such as lung desease caused by coal energy, a cost recently assessed by the Harvard Medical School to be close to half a trillion dollars per year or 1,600 dollars for every American, every year! A cost levied on the public, not the coal industry.

A real disruption, would be for Jeb Bush, to finally come out and denounce his past in dirty energy and admit that what needs to be disrupted is Big Oil and Big Energy.

So this is what I think we will see in 2016. After listening to the man speak, there is no doubt in my mind that he is running. I am just afraid that in all his moderate talk of reforming education, welfare and immigration, we forget the elephant in the room, our climate.