[Originally published in the Randolph Herald.]
Americans are more upset and more unified about the prices of crude oil and its byproducts than they are about Iraq or abortion. We are, after all, incredibly dependent on that commodity in our daily lives. And just wait until next heating season!
The automobile is absolutely indispensable in suburban and rural America. What happens when gas costs the commuter who lives 25-50 miles from his job, as is so often the case, an additional $50-100 a week? He can’t afford it. All he can afford is public transportation, but outside our major population centers, there isn’t much of any. Much of rural America, including Vermont, is crisscrossed by abandoned rail, trolley and bus lines, facilities we have given up injudiciously during our love affair with the automobile.
Everyone has a special demon to blame for the price of energy. We blame Iran, Venezuela, the Arabs, OPEC, Russia, international oil companies, in short, anyone we don’t like who is in any way involved. How easy that is! Unfortunately, the real reason is even simpler. The real reason is that the international demand for energy has skyrocketed in the past decade. Thousands of new automobiles constantly hit the roads of India, China and the rest of the world. There are daily almost 20,000 additional humans inhabiting our planet, demanding food, housing, heating and cooling and all the other things that people feel they need.
And through all of this, Americans remain by far the highest per capita users of energy on the planet. As it is, our energy self-indulgence is forcing up the price we pay for it, damaging our balance of payments problems and our economy, lowering our standard of living and making our lives more precarious.
The solution to this problem is tightly entwined with global warming. The two simply cannot be separated. Calls to drill into the Alaskan reserve and all the other untapped suspected pools of crude hardly will solve the long-range dual problem. Ditto coal reserves. Such activity may add to established reserves, but it will exacerbate climate change. Even the Bush Administration, traditionally denigrators of climate change theory, have now acknowledge it exists and is a problem.
For that reason, many of the so-called “solutions” to the energy problem are purely political – typical pandering hogwash. The “gas tax holiday”, the cessation of replenishing the strategic oil reserve, a windfall profits tax on the oil companies and the otherworldly Chrysler offer for $2.99 per gallon gas for three years to help them sell unsellable, gas-guzzlers, are all really useless suggestions that do not address the real problem.
This country needs to stop all the political and commercial grandstanding and accept two realities: Oil is in sort supply and burning oil threatens the planet. The solution to the problems lies in investment in new energy sources over which we have control and which do not exacerbate global warming. None of that includes finding and pumping new crude or digging more coal. It involves cutting our self-indulgent use of energy and that means, God forbid the word should be used, conservation: new mileage standards, better public transportation, new searches for alternate power, a nationwide 55 mph speed limit, etc, etc. The four-day work week (20% energy saving) isn’t even a bad idea!
If you don’t like these ideas, you are not only part of the problem, in a democratic society, you are the problem. We Americans are truly self-indulgent folks – unlikely to apply the necessary political pressure to change things quickly.
Over the past couple of centuries, America has repeatedly demonstrated one basic characteristic. We do not easily plan ahead! In this case, we love our cars and the sense of freedom they give us. If there is more crude to be found, let’s go ahead and pump it wherever it is and to hell with the economic ramifications or climate change! And so, we move forward on paths that do not have rational bases and do not lead to solutions to the root problems. And guess what? We don’t find needed solutions because they are not being sufficiently vigorously sought. Then, we suddenly are faced with disaster!
The better side of our national character is that, faced with imminent disaster, and perhaps only then, America has always, at least until now, come up with real solutions. The issue to consider right now is whether America is still up to that performance, and even if it is, why not face reality today, get on with finding solutions and avoid real pain before the situation goes completely critical?
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.
