How America will achieve energy security

GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman commits to U.S. energy independence. Some advice for how he can succeed in that goal

Jon Huntsman unveiled his economic program Wednesday. At the center is a commitment to U.S. energy independence.

Yeah, I know, you've heard it before. Perhaps you saw the Jon Stewart bit where he edits together every U.S. president since Richard Nixon saying the same thing. 

But the real news about energy independence is that the U.S. has in fact made great progress since the 1970s. Through the 1980s and until 1995, the United States actually burned less oil per year than it burned in the 1970s. Not until 1996 did the U.S. again consume as much oil as in 1978.

And while oil use has climbed since 1996, it has climbed by less than you might think: Only about 10 percent.

By other measures, the U.S. looks even better. The United States burns only half as much energy today to produce an additional inflation-adjusted dollar of output as in 1980. Progress.

Reducing oil use is simultaneously good for the environment, good for national security, and good for the long-run growth of the U.S. economy.

But understand how that progress was achieved: 

Americans did not invent some alternative new engine or motor fuel. The cars of 2011 run on gasoline just as they did in 1971.

Instead, Americans did the following things:

* They used oil for fewer purposes. They substituted natural gas for oil as a fuel for heating homes. Electrical utilities retired oil-fired generators.

* They reorganized their society to use energy more efficiently. Hyper-energy-efficient freight rail regained its dominance over trucking.

* They devised incremental improvements in existing products. One example I discovered in my research from the 1970s still astonishes me: A fuel-efficient contemporary car uses less gasoline while driving than a typical 1960s car used while parked — because back in the 1960s, gasoline tanks were not air tight and allowed evaporation.