STEWARDSHIP:
Environment & Energy | April 10, 2005
ENERGY
MATTERS
A
Posting in "GordonTalk"
The
record
high prices at the pump would be driving me insane, except I
can't afford the gas for the trip!
Wasn't
the price of gasoline supposed to go down after we
secured the oil fields in Iraq? Maybe it really wasn't "blood for oil" after all: there's been plenty of blood
but where's all that oil?
The
U.N. "oil for food" program before the war has been roundly
and rightly criticized for having been riddled
with corruption, which allowed Iraqi oil to flow to the West
but kept Western food and medicine from flowing to the Iraqi
people.
That
was then; this is now.
Now,
hundreds of billions of dollars in Western aid are flowing into
Iraq (and some of it is actually getting to the people); but I
have to ask again, where is all that oil?
Well,
crime
and corruption are indeed rampant in the "wild west" of
post-war Iraq, as they were in post-Cold War Russia. And the
infrastructure needed to support the Iraqi oil industry is, like
the rest of the country, ravaged by years of sanctions and war.
And it doesn't help when corporations such as Halliburton get
caught cheating the government out of millions of dollars
allocated for the reconstruction efforts.
So
what ideas other than Neo-Con invasions of oil-rich nations does
the GOP offer to increase our energy supplies? How about plundering
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- that'll be good
for a few months' worth of our energy consumption (a few years
from now).
Or
are increases in the price of gasoline, heating oil, and other
petroleum products really due to problems in the supply
of oil?
Well,
the Saudis claim that they and the rest of OPEC are pumping
as much oil as we can refine; and that actually does seem to
be the case: at least as of last year, there
hasn't been a major new oil refinery built in this country in
almost thirty years; and again at least as of last year,
there aren't any plans to build any more anytime soon.
Hmm.
Sort of reminds me of the energy companies in California not
having increased electrical generating capacity in the years
leading up to our rolling blackouts -- helped along, of course,
by convenient "down times" at the facilities that had been
built, thus driving up the price of electrical energy during
peak periods of demand.
Now,
we won't get into how Gray Davis, before he was kicked out of
office, expedited the construction of more
electrical generating capacity than had been built in this
state in a generation (honest we won't get into that, Arnold:
we know you've got enough problems as it is).
Back
at the gas pump, there's another big part of the price problem
that just pulled up: an SUV.
Now,
I don't want to get on the wrong side of all you soccer moms -- heaven knows my own mom carted us kids and our band
instruments all around town on such a regular basis that she
should've joined the Teamsters -- but the fact remains that
the American auto fleet has an almost insatiable appetite for
petroleum.
And
the Bush Administration has been more a part of the problem than
a part of the solution, by demonstrating a
complete lack of leadership on the issue of increasing auto fuel
efficiency. And ironically, by kowtowing to the demands of
domestic automakers, the Administration is in effect helping to
hand over even more of the domestic auto market to foreign
competition -- by and large manufacturers of more
fuel-efficient vehicles.
Truth
be told, however, there is an even greater factor (I can't
really say "culprit") in the demand side of the
equation, driving up the price of oil: the
incredible economic boom in the most populous nation on earth,
China.
And
we have precious little control over that, unless we'd care to
not buy any of the seemingly endless array of products imported
from there (I, for one, am not quite liberal-minded enough to
live a "clothing optional" existence).
But
something must be done, my friends; and not just so we won't
have to pay three, four, or five bucks a gallon at the pump to
get to work or the store: every economic activity takes
energy. If we don't do something dramatic to meet our energy
needs, we won't be able to afford to manufacture and transport
any of our goods or perform any of our services anymore. No
economy can survive being crippled like that.
In
the near term, we must develop more efficient uses of the
petroleum that we do have; and in the long term, we must develop
practical alternate sources of usable energy (here's a clue:
look up in the sky; there's
thousands of times more energy, in the form of light, hitting
the earth from the sun than we could ever use).
I
know we've been hearing all this ad nauseum since the Arab oil
embargoes of the 1970s but ignoring a problem won't make it go
away. Every year that goes by without a significant
innovation in energy conservation or production gives us just
one less year to solve our oil addiction, which grows more
daunting every day (every ever-hotter day, thanks to the fossil
fuel-aggravated Greenhouse Effect).
But
I have great faith in our can-do spirit and good ol' American
ingenuity to solve this or practically any other problem that
comes our way.
Then
again, I have great faith in the powers that be doing everything
in their power to oppose any great change in the situation that
is...the extremely profitable situation that is: the
bottom line is that during these times of record high prices at
the pump, petroleum
companies are raking in record high profits (note if you
will the Red State source of this now all-too-common criticism).
It
turned out that we didn't really need a subpoena to learn what
Cheney had talked to oil execs about during his closed-door
energy meetings: it's now as clear as an oil-soaked bird on the
beach is black.
So
when people complain about the high price of gas, I just think
to myself, well, what'd we expect? Cheney, Bush, and other
ex-oilmen run the show. If shepherds were in the White House,
we'd be getting fleeced by the high price of wool.
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