How the energy boom will transform US politics

>> i'm hoping we can expand the equation beyond that, and what am i talking about? what about the value enhancing end uses of either oil or gas where you use it not necessarily as an energy source primarily but you're keeping those good jobs in the united states by using it as a feed stock for high-tech industries or pharmaceuticals or chemicals or fertilizers, that kind of thing. if you can do that, it may dial down some of the animosity between fossil fuels and renewables as it relates to electricity or transportation fuels.

>> that animosity seems to me like that animosity exists at this table but barely at capitol hill . it's lie goliath and david's puppy poodle in terms of the size of the industries we're talking about.

>> that's absolutely true. the other thing happening on the ground across the country is they're climate victims from all the energy development going on. the people who's homes are affected in pennsylvania, the people that lost their homes in staten island and the jersey shore from hurricane sandy, the people that live aalong the keystone pipeline . there are people across the country beginning to rebel against the huge fossil fuel development that is taking over their communities. i think that's the counterweight. it's going to come from the grassroots and demand -- it's going to end up in washington.

>> i think that's the key point. you look at the history of environmental movements in this country. the american people including in red states have proved themselves willing over and over again to tax themselves to address current risks to their health, their children's health, their communities, their water supply, the air they breathe. the problem with climate to date is it's seen as a future risk, and it's coming forward.

>> the politics also change -- you made this interesting point about the geography changing. we basically know how the senators from west virginia are going to vote on stuff that has to do with coal. democrat, republican, marxist, whatever. whoever you would elect from west virginia they're going to vote a certain way on coal. and the fact that we now have this incredibly distributed development because of the fracking boom means a lot of different places now are geographically playing. that goes two ways. one way is we produce more senators from the state of west virginia and how they vote. the other is we produce this broad grassroots activactivism.

>> look at this last election. why was president obama as muted as he was about climate and about oil and gas and coal production? well, virginia, colorado, ohio, pennsylvania. these are --

>> michigan.

>> the way our electoral college is, we only worry about ten states invested in oil and fwas production.

>> somes back to the economics as well. i look at my home state of pennsylvania where we had the early stages of huge boom of marcellus shale . hundreds of wells deployed. some companies are down to a couple wells. why? because the price has plummeted. the reason it's relevant to the politics is if this is a boom and bust , then those politics that get really engrained when a big part of the state's economics depend on that industry, maybe that doesn't take hold. that's where i think it's interesting in terms of end use industries, if you can see them come in, you have a different equation with that same resource.

>> i want to talk about the price that has happened, because that's the background for all of this. this is what consumers tend to care about and voters when we talk about price of the pump and the people filling up on cable news. my sense is that the price of energy in some ways is too low at a certain level right now. i want to talk about that right after we take this