Pass It and They Will Invest
 

Time Tables on Oil Imports, Not Iraq Withdrawal

I was dismayed when the Senate passed a bill in December authorizing $189.4 billion to continue the Iraq and Afghan campaigns.  The bill passed by 90-3^[i].  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the total cost of these wars through 2017 will be between $1.2 and $1.6 trillion^[ii].  However disturbing a $1.6 trillion war bill may be, what fills me with horror is the year that the CBO quoted for us: 2017.  When sober minded leaders contemplate this conflict occupying the next ten years, are we paying attention?

Consider it another way: Democrats just overwhelmingly authorized the continuation of a campaign that no one can see the end of.  Both George Bush and John McCain have said as much and Ted Koppel did a documentary to drive the point home: our children’s children must win this war. 

I have two small boys.  When we talk in terms of public policy not just about the financial cost of the war, but about whose blood will be disbursed to pay for it, our leaders discuss these matters as if the lives involved were abstractions.  Yet there is nothing abstract about the flesh and blood babes playing on my floors with trains and cars who have no idea that decision makers in D.C. are brokering the future with their lives, more concerned that powerful special interests and the drivers of today's gas guzzlers value driving convenience, lifestyle and short-term profits more than tomorrow's flesh and blood.

There are times when tempered emotions and collegial language are evidence of insanity, not sobriety.  Now is such.  A fifteen to thirty year war?  Non-partisan cost estimates of as much as $1.6 trillion for just the next ten?  Casual agreement that our children’s children may fight (and die) to see this through? 

The insanity is that we would fight so hard, with so much treasure, guaranteed in promissory notes listing as collateral the blood of our children – in return for nothing more than the preservation of the economic status quo – to guarantee stability of our oil supply.   Oil has become our nation’s dragon in the mountain and our children face lottery as to who among them will be sacrificed to still its wrath.

What can we do?  Democrats are stymied where it comes to placing timetables on the President for a withdrawal – if a 90-3 vote doesn’t say so, what does?   Even if they succeeded, to what end?  Would withdrawal from Iraq do anything to end our the dependence that funnels money into that part of the world or which holds our attention their so acutely?

It is time that we rose together and acted like we are a people, a society, a country, at war. That does not mean we should send more troops or that Democrats should tame their rhetoric and “support the President”.  We should act like upwards of 800,000 of America’s finest young people are being rotated into harm's way and will continue to be for years to come, act like this is going to cost $1.6 trillion, act like that is real money that could have been spent in more useful ways.  Most of all: take our leaders seriously when they behave as though the current course will go on endlessly - recognize that they are providing nothing to break our dependence on foreign energy and that they are instead proposing that by their policies, the children playing in the parks this afternoon are going to be asked to fight and risk death in ten years so that your neighbor can drive solo in an SUV.

How can we do this?  Deal – deal boldly with the President, make him take our whole country, with all of its adults, those who voted for him and supported this conflict, to war.  This can be done with a timetable, but not a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq.

We need a timetable on imported oil - an energy diet.  At present we import 12.3 million barrels of oil per day.  Congress should place a quota on imported oil: an Energy Independence Act.  To avoid market shocks the quota can start six months after the bill passes and may begin at the level of current imports, but decrease by 500,000 barrels per day once every six months thereafter, until such time as imports from nations outside North America are banned.

This program will make us commanders of our markets instead of slaves to them.  As direct replacements for gasoline we have at our disposal ethanol, methanol and bio-diesel, but most economically we also have oil-shale and coal liquefaction, the latter two of which yield gasoline at $35-$40/barrel compared to the $90-$100 that petroleum currently trades at^{[iii],[iv],[v]}.  Coal, biomass and oil shale are abundant in the US – there is no need to enrich foreign providers, we can spend our energy dollars here.  

Private money is available to make these alternatives to Middle East oil a reality.  The reason alternatives are not already being developed is that creating an economy of scale for these energy sources requires massive investment and investors are fearful that if they put money into building those economies the price of oil will drop, as it did in the early 1980s, driving the alternatives out of business at massive financial loss.

Using the power of Democracy as a traffic light to markets, we can change this.  A bill such as the one I’ve described would send a market signal stating: “the U.S. is done with energy dependence – invest your dollars now in alternatives – invest them in the U.S.”  It’s been said, “If you build it, they will come”.   I say, “If you pass it, they will invest”.  Billions of dollars are racing around the world looking for investments: let’s give them one – America’s future.

But coal? What about global warming and mercury pollution?  We will no more warm the earth burning gasoline from coal then from petroleum.  Besides, there’s no reason to stop with a market signal.  If there’s anything that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have taught us it is that where it comes to America’s future, there’s money.  Let’s use it.   The land area of the lower 48 states receives 50 trillion giga-joules of solar energy per year, >500 times annual, national energy consumption^[vi].  The theoretical potential energy available from wind is five times current global energy use^[vii]. 

They say “wind and solar are too expensive” and “wind and solar can’t compete economically with other sources of power”.  Nonsense! 

There are a finite number of solar cells and windmills necessary to supply all American energy needs.  Whatever that finite number is, building and placing every one of them will cost vastly less than the $189.4 billion that Congress authorized to carry on fighting.  We deserve the solar cells and windmills.  We owe them to our children.  Money is available to build them. 

Let us source all standard electrical needs from solar and wind while powering transportation with oil, biomass, coal and other products from North American sources.  Is this radical?  I don't think so.  I believe "radical" is spending $1.6 trillion dollars for the next ten years on a war we expect our grandchildren be fighting - a war for no greater a cause than to preserve the current petroleum supply line.  My children will not be available, not today and not in 2017, to guarantee anyone’s right to drive a Hummer.

To bring attention to this path to energy independence, I am fasting.  My fast began Monday, January 14 and ends at the midnight starting Monday, January 28.  While fasting I am writing senators and representatives to plead this case.  If this fails then this summer I will fast again, longer.  Consider joining me.  Fast for one day, three days or more as your physician advises, but write your congressional representatives: demand that if we must fight a war, that we commit to eliminating the dependence that forces us to fight it.