You’ve heard the law school phrase, “Good cases make bad law.”

Might Sunday’s Superdome blackout during Super Bowl XLVII make good law? (Assuming there is such a thing, that is.) From The Hill:

The Super Bowl power outage could fuel interest in energy policy debates that have been on Capitol Hill’s back burner in recent years, a top lawmaker said.

“I think it helps to perhaps kick-start the debate,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“I think it raises an awareness. Unfortunately for us, most of us take energy for granted. It’s just always there,” Murkowski told reporters on Monday morning, moments after she unveiled a sweeping energy policy blueprint. …

“We have got this immaculate conception theory of energy. It just happens. The lights turn on, it’s the temperature we want, until it’s not, until it becomes inconvenient, it interrupts our game, it interrupts what we are doing, and then all of a sudden it is like, ‘well wait a minute, what it going on here, where do we get this stuff from, how could it not be there and be reliable,’” the Alaska Republican said. …

Her plan — which she hopes will inform a series of bills — touches on everything from electricity policy to oil-and-gas production to biofuels and more.

Its many recommendations for the electric power sector include reexamining regulations that Republicans allege will constrain coal-fired power generation.

The plan also includes calls to boost information-sharing to thwart cyberattacks against energy infrastructure and toughening criminal statutes for cyber crimes; various proposals to bolster transmission infrastructure; support for biomass-fired power, hydropower and development of small modular nuclear reactors, and many other proposals.

“We should aim to use energy more wisely, but that is not a substitute for production, or for measures that will increase the reliability of our systems and supply,” Murkowski said in a speech Monday morning to a conference of state electricity regulators.

Energy is required to power the economy. The idea that you will grow the economy and use less total energy is simply false. (No society in the history of mankind has ever downsized itself to prosperity.) Using less energy to save yourself money should be sufficient incentive to use less energy, not some sort of government stick (car fuel economy standards).

The best way to achieve energy security, however you define that, is to be able to generate energy from as many different sources as possible. That kind of strategy insulates you from price shocks in, for instance, gasoline, fuel oil, or natural gas. Those prices are set worldwide, but increasing domestic oil production makes the U.S. less subject to the whims of OPEC, particularly if, in the “Arab spring,” OPEC governments unfriendly to the U.S. are replaced by governments even more unfriendly to the U.S.

Many conservatives are reflexively opposed to “green energy.” I am not one of them, but I do not believe “green” energy is superior to other forms of energy. I’m not necessarily opposed to the tax breaks the green energy has been getting because I am opposed to taxing business. I am opposed to penalizing other forms of energy to promote green energy, however. (The Obama administration’s weak-dollar policy has the side effect, unintended or not, of driving up gas prices.)

The more sources of energy we have — coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, biomass — the better off we are.