Posted on 08/13/2004 9:13:14 AM PDT by ZGuy
One of Sen. John Kerry’s top applause-getters these days, as he campaigns from town to town, is the danger of America’s reliance on foreign energy, especially oil coming from Saudi Arabia.
It’s an issue that cuts several ways for the Democratic nominee: It allows him to make an implicit slap at President Bush’s long-standing relationship with the Saudi royal family. It allows him to lament the spiraling cost of oil and gasoline, which threatens the economy’s tenuous recovery. And it allows Kerry to assert an unassailable goal — self-sufficiency — without really explaining how he’ll get us there.
The problem is that it’s all hooey. Like it or not, this is a nation reliant on foreign oil. The Middle East holds a majority of the world’s oil reserves. Unless Kerry intends to import oil from another planet, his vaguely jingoistic rhetoric is beside the point: America is tied to foreign oil indefinitely.
That’s one of the problems with the Democrats’ energy plan: It’s short on specifics, even the hazy ones expected in a nascent campaign.
The Bush-Cheney administration has concrete proposals to overhaul the nation’s energy policies, some of which have already been rejected by Congress. The problem is that many of the proposals go hand in hand with the president’s retrograde environmental policies, and like Kerry’s, seem concerned only with increasing the amount of energy available while ignoring the benefits of conservation.
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Neither party has even hinted at a workable vision for dealing with the fact that the world is going to run out of oil in this century. With the fact that global warming isn’t going to stop until we stop burning fossil fuels. With the fact that no clean energy source is anywhere near ready for widespread use.
Since the politicians won’t, we’ll say it plainly: America, and the world, needs to use less energy. To make the existing fossil fuels last as long as possible, to ease global warming, to give scientists a chance to come up with viable sources of clean energy.
Instead, the Democrats’ white paper panders to the notion that we can have it all: “Kerry and Edwards believe all Americans should drive the cars, SUVs, minivans and trucks of their choice, but that these vehicles can be more efficient, safer, and more affordable.”
Cars and trucks can be all of those things if the campaign also manages to repeal a couple of laws of physics. Our politics today has become so cynical that it is more expedient to propose the impossible than it is to tell us the painful truth.
In the lifetime of children born now, fossil fuels will become scarce, if not run out. If we’re not careful, thanks largely to burgeoning pollution in industrializing economies like China and India, the environment will eventually give out. As the most profligate user of energy, America needs to set a worldwide example of restraint.
For now, the nation needs mileage standards for all cars and trucks sold between these shores. The standards should be set by thoughtful study, not by corporations. (Kerry so feared a backlash from unions and carmakers that he’s apparently abandoned a responsible proposal to raise mileage requirements by 2015. The section of his proposal on increasing the fuel efficiency of cars is now, tellingly, blank.)
For now, mass transit can help both with the impending energy shortages, and provide a solution to the woes of sprawl. For now, simple increases in efficiency could save half the energy we use, though the image of President Jimmy Carter in a cardigan ensures that no politician will ever ask for that kind of effort.
Still, if we were as efficient energy users as folks in Europe and Asia, the nation could save billions of dollars a week, and energy sources would last years longer.
Everyone agrees that America should spend the money it takes to ensure the nation leads the effort to find a sustainable form of nonpolluting energy. It should be this generation’s Manhattan Project. It will be expensive, and it will take decades.
American ingenuity will eventually overcome whatever energy shortage looms at the end of this century. But leaders who can’t, or won’t, tell us the truth about the present have no right to lead us into that bright future.
I thought I'd follow up your post with this take.
"...the environment will eventually give out" ?
Just like this statement, which is not proveable, on any level.
"Neither party has even hinted at a workable vision for dealing with the fact that the world is going to run out of oil in this century. With the fact that global warming isn’t going to stop until we stop burning fossil fuels. With the fact that no clean energy source is anywhere near ready for widespread use. "
There are many 'untapped' and 'undiscovered' resources and nobody, except those that have bought into the environmental lunacy, believe we will 'run out' in this century..
It's NOT a proveable assumption.
Even global climate scientists are now saying that the date extrappolated ,based on a 'model' in KYOTO are wrong.
"the date extrappolated "
Sorry!
Meant 'data'.
Based on the way this particular phrase is stated, it sounds as though the author wants federally mandated conservation. I would not agree with that approach.
Oh, yes! Kerry let it slip a while back as to how he is going to keep the US from being dependent on foreign oil. He's going to raise taxes to fund a program that will assist people to afford to buy hybrid cars!
ROTFLMSAO!!
Typical "liberal" thinking, huh?
What the poor dolt doesn't know, among other things, is that due in part to the fact that they have to lug some heavy batteries and extra electrical equipment around all the time, hybrid cars actually don't get as good of mileage as regular cars do.
It's only because of a phony-balony formula that the EPA came up with that they can even advertise higher mileage for hybrids. They haven't proved out in the real world.
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