Not satisfied with the destruction that Obamacare has wrought, or will when it finally goes into effect, the White House is shifting focus and looking for another industry to destroy.

With the bruising health care debate over, President Obama’s top economic adviser left little doubt last week that energy and climate has taken its place atop the administration’s agenda.

During a 30-minute speech (pdf) at a Washington energy conference, Larry Summers, the head of the White House’s National Economic Council, used lofty rhetoric to warn of the long-term consequences if Congress fails to follow through this year on a sweeping overhaul of how the nation generates and uses energy.

“Read the history of great nations,” Summers said. “Read how they succeed and read how they fail. Their ability to mobilize to solve problems before they are absolutely imminent crises is what determines their longevity. That’s why this task of economic renewal is so important broadly. And that’s why I believe it is so important that we move for economic reasons to pass comprehensive energy legislation.”

The ability to mobilize to solve problems is indeed important. What Mr. Summers neglects is any consideration for how societies mobilize. What methods are best? He blows right by that question and just assumes that mobilization requires government direction.

The opposite is true. Free markets are much more capable of marshaling resources to deal with problems than governments. It requires a lot of information in order to centrally plan the use of capital and other resources. No one person or group of people are capable of taking into consideration all the data which is carried routinely and without significant notice through the free market price system. Yet history is full of failed attempts to do so.

Economic renewal of the kind which Larry Summers desires does not depend upon “comprehensive” legislation of any sort. It needs only for government to get out of the way.