Old rules, old roots

■"Germany's Political Crisis Has U.S. Roots: State Governors Wield Veto Power in Post-World War II System to Prevent Rise of Dictator," by Marcus Walker and David Crawford, Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2005, p. A10.

■"A New Look At Nukes: Energy firms push to build reactos as natural gas prices soar," by James M. Pethokoukis, U.S. News & World Report, 26 September 2005, p. 52.

Fascinating WSJ story on how the American approach to setting up West Germany's political system after WWII is the prime cause behind the current political paralysis (e.g., weird afterlude to election, several recent attempts at political and economic reform stymied by regional governments). Basic truth is that we made the regional governments very strong in West Germany to prevent another Hitler, or another World War. This was never a big problem so long as it was West v. East, but now that the unifying dangers are all gone, it gets problematic, keeping Germany sclerotic and rather neurotic. America had this problem to a very real degree prior to the Civil War and the huge rise in Federal power that it triggered. That's when we stopped being these United States and became the United States.

Obviously, the Nazi period was seminal for Germany, but as it's several generations removed now and even its top leadership is post-WWII in its formative years (0-10), it's time for Germany to move on.

Yet look at something like the history of nuclear power in America and you see that early traumatic experiences can scar a society for "life," or until the memory ages out of the political system. We chose unwisely in terms of the original generation of nuclear power plants in this country (thank you Hyman Rickover!) and the poor performance and safety record of those plants gives nukes a very bad name here for the longest time.

Elsewhere in the world, the technology has moved on, and the fear factor never quite developed to the degree it did here. Now, we look fairly backwards in our attitudes on nuclear power: an old social and political rule set that's desperately outmoded given the changes in technology, the progressive de-carbonization of our energy profile (short course: wood to coal to oil to gas to nukes/hydrogen), and the rising prices for oil and gas thanks to the rising Asian economies.

People tend to think energy is all about oil and cars, but that's about 40% of our usage. Electricity is the King Kong of our b-t-u-sage. American energy companies have been building mostly gas-powered turbines for electricity generation over the past 20 years, and now gas prices are rising just like oil prices (Guess what? Electricity is tripling in Asia over the next twenty years!), so nukes are looking more and more real as a significant answer over the coming years and decades.

Get used to the idea.