It is hard to read the news from Japan to the Persian Gulf and then reflect on American politics and not conclude, as scientists would say, that we’re running an uncontrolled experiment on the only country and planet we have. And what is that experiment? We’re basically taunting — there is no other word for it — the two most merciless forces on earth: the market and Mother Nature.

At a time when Japan is suffering a nuclear catastrophe that is likely to make the world even more dependent on oil and gas, at a time when the world’s top oil and gas producers are entering what will be, at best, an unstable, and, at worst, a viciously violent transition from autocracy to, one hopes, democracy, and at a time when the combination of the two could slow down global growth while we’re still trying to climb out of recession, America has no energy policy, no climate policy and no long-term plan to deal with its unsustainable deficit.

We’re basically saying to the market and Mother Nature: “Bring it on. We’re going to be dumb as we wanna be and put off all these big decisions, possibly until 2013, after the next presidential election, because our two political parties would rather focus on winning the next election and blaming the other guy than making hard choices.”

Maybe the market and Mother Nature will accommodate us and wait until 2013. If so, we will get to deal with these problems in our time, in our way, with minimum collateral damage. It will be like having a rotten tooth removed by a dentist using lots of Novocain. It will hurt a little, but we’ll easily recover.