"Thanks to the Bush-Cheney energy policy, No Mullah Left Behind has been fully financed and is now the gift that keeps on giving: terrorism." -- Thomas Friedman
Oil is a drug, and the United States is addicted. Pundits and politicians readily overlook the fundamental need for energy independence (i.e., independence from foreign oil). We import 11.2 million barrels of petroleum (crude oil) a day, taking up 25 percent of the world's demand. We exhaust 9 million barrels daily just to run our cars. We cannot look to our own land to satiate our addiction: We hold only 3 percent of the world's reserves (i.e., drilling in the Alaskan wilderness is negligible).
Regrettably, as Friedman stresses, our current administration has "adopted an energy policy that is supporting the worst Arab oil regimes and the worst trends." The battle against terrorism is rooted in the Arab-Muslim world, advanced by money-hungry, zealous oil moguls -- some of whom are heads of state.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) provides us with 41 percent of our petroleum imports, with Saudi Arabia being our No. 1 supplier of crude oil. As David Aufhauser, a former Treasury Department general counselor, testified to a Senate Committee this past June, the Saudis expend an estimated $2 billion to $2.5 billion annually "to spread Wahhabism," a radical form of Islam.
Friedman confirms, what Americans pay for oil merely benefits "mullahs who build madrasas that preach intolerance" -- and Bush's campaign purse. Top oil companies have given Bush hundreds of thousands of dollars to aid his gubernatorial and presidential races. (Bush and Cheney then crafted their energy policy in clandestine meetings with such shady industrialists.)
David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, further states that progressive reforms, which encumber radical Islam, are feasible in the Arab-Muslim world, "but oil is like a narcotic that kills a lot of the pain for them and prevents real change."
States less dependent on oil revenues are making reforms, like Bahrain (where women ran and voted in the first elections held in the Arab gulf), Dubai and Jordan. Diminished oil revenues force countries to enact economic and, subsequently, political reforms. Iran, now swimming in oil revenues, shuns foreign investment when such investment opens borders, begets modernization and instigates reform.
Furthermore, a study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) shows that a national commitment to achieve 20 percent of our nation's energy from renewable sources by 2020 will: net hundreds of thousands of jobs exploiting Americans' ingenuity, increase wages by $6.8 billion, save consumers $27 billion dollars in gas and electric bills, increase the U.S. gross domestic product by $5.9 million, advance the battle against radical Islam and help clean the air we breathe. (The Union of Concerned Scientists offers a similar forecast.)
We achieve energy independence by not only effusively investing in renewable energy but increasing cars' MPG consumption, affording tax breaks for those owning environmentally-friendly hybrid cars and increasing taxes for those owning exorbitant SUVs, as well as advancing forms of public transportation (at which European countries are so adept).
Our current administration slights such a comprehensive approach, while merely extolling hydrogen technologies. Though, paradoxically, up to 90 percent of all hydrogen will be refined from oil and other fossil fuels with Bush's plan.
If only we had a government tough enough to bite the hand that feeds our addiction.
Write to Russ at rjwebster@bsu.edu
Visit http://rjwebster.iweb.bsu.edu/index.htm
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