Fox's ideas on fighting terror are a distinction without a difference

I'm going to quote FoxNews "security analyst" K.T. McFarland at length, with my comments, on her prescriptions for fighting violent Islamists... THINGS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS LARGELY ALREADY DOING:

KTM: "An economic component that bankrupts radical jihad by cutting off their oil revenues  - attacking their oil fields, refineries and tankers  -- while we also develop our own resources to be energy independent of Arab oil."

Me: The U.S. is already energy independent, thanks to Obama's relaxing rules on fracking. We have so much U.S. oil -- and that's a mixed blessing, if you read the WSJ or Bloomberg -- that Obama even ended the long-time ban on exporting U.S. oil.  ISIS does control oil fields in Syria, but they sell it all on the black market, and we are already bombing them. 

KTM: "A banking component that uses the US primacy in international banking and finance to freeze out any country or company that does business with radical Islamists from ISIS to Boko Haram."

Me: Ditto the above.  I'm sure we could do more to root out the middle men trading ISIS's oil, (cough! Turkey!) but again, it's not like ISIS is trading oil on the world futures market.

KTM: "An alliance component that draws together moderate Muslims into an alliance against radical Islam.  If they’re reluctant to join an anti-Islamist alliance, we should let them know they shouldn’t come running to us if things don’t work out.   We should call them out if they have some in their inner circles that play both sides.  

"And we may have to hold our noses and partner with countries we do not always approve of, as we did during World War II."

Me:  Who are the moderate Muslim countries that have the capacity to fight ISIS?  I can think of only one: Turkey.  Saudi Arabia has the capacity but it is not a moderate Muslim country.  The Kurds are everybody's favorite moderate Muslims but they don't have their own state; and moderate ally #1, Turkey, will not allow the Kurds to form their own state. 

KTM: "An anti-hostage component – we will not negotiate, exchange prisoners with nor pay ransom to terrorists. If you take our people hostage, we will turn the tables on you and put a very large bounty on your heads. We promise to hunt down kill anyone who kills our citizens, no matter now long it takes."

Me: Who's the greatest terrorist hunter of all time?  President Barack Obama.  Indeed, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg just revealed that, "killing the so-called caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is one of the top goals of the American national-security apparatus in Obama’s last year." 

And that's not an empty threat, coming from the guy who killed bin Laden and most of Al Qaeda's senior leadership during his term in office.

KTM: "A communications component which champions western values, like we had during WWII and the Cold War. Violent radical Jihad and western civilization are NOT morally equivalent.  No apology tour, no comparing the Crusades to ISIS.  Be proud of America or be quiet."

Me: Communications are a funny thing. Compel somebody to say something they don't believe -- good luck with that! -- and it comes across as lame.  And when the U.S. tries to do it ourselves -- and we do, assiduously -- the results are mixed, because we're even lamer, and nobody there trusts our motives.  The truth is that, in the age of social media and instant viral communication, it's very hard to shape the dialog, especially in a region we understand poorly.  Putin's Russia does the best job of it, with an army of paid trolls and bloggers, but what they mainly accomplish is sowing doubt in the concept of objective truth of events itself to create cover for Putin's maneuvers, not creating a new accepted truth.

KTM: " An Internet component that blocks their online recruiting and training efforts and uses metadata to track and destroy terrorist leaders."

Me: This sounds a lot like more cyber spying.  And who's the greatest cyber spy of all time?  Again, President Obama. 

KTM: "A religious and ideological component which applauds moderate Muslim leaders – like Egyptian President Sisi and the Grand Imam of Al Ahzar Mosque- who speak out against radical Islam."

Me: Ouch.  Egyptian President Sisi is now widely regarded in Egypt and the region as a worse tyrant than President Mubarak.  He doesn't "speak out" against radical Islam, he jails, tortures and kills anybody suspected of associations with such.  That's not exactly clean and neat, and certainly not representative of traditional American values.  Nevertheless... who is Sisi's greatest patron?  Again, President Obama.

KTM: "And finally, a military component which does not, repeat does not, require thousands of American combat forces, but rather gives our allies every inducement and all the arm twisting necessary so they put their own boots on the ground.  And which supplies them with whatever they need to do the job."

Me: This is the only semi-novel and impactful recommendation of McFarland. She's basically saying, arm the Saudis and the Turks to fight our battles for us, because nobody else has the capacity even to accept such help.  Israel does but they don't want to get involved. (BTW, gee, isn't it funny that our bestest ally in the Mideast isn't helping us to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq?  Why is that??) But we have problems with Turkey (see: Kurds); and with Saudi Arabia, which spends millions of dollars all over the world promoting a radical Wahhabist version of Sunni Islam; and which is still more concerned with Iran than ISIS or Al Qaeda.

So in summary, McFarland's prescriptions on how to fight "global jihad" boil down to a distinction without a difference vis-a-vis current U.S. policy. The truth is, there is only so much the U.S. can do in the world, especially in the fractious and conflicted Arab Middle East, and even less our "allies" are willing to do, no matter what bribes or inducements we throw at them.

Finally, I've said it before, but comparing all of these people to the Nazis or the USSR, and saying we can copy-paste what we did in the 40's or the Cold War to defeat them is moronic, stupid, wrong, impractical...I just don't know how else to say it.  Political correctness has nothing to do with this fight either.  Whenever you hear somebody say any of this, know you're listening to an old fogey who doesn't understand "franchised" terrorism and the root of these many regional conflicts -- which have nothing to do with Islam, originally -- that create power vacuums and provide the perfect breeding ground for Islamist terrorism. 


Yes, America, it's war. Here's how we can stop losing and start winning
By K.T. McFarland
March 22, 2016 | FoxNews
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/03/22/yes-america-its-war-heres-how-can-stop-losing-and-start-winning.html?intcmp=hphz01

Energy myths: POTUS and 'energy independence'

It seems my work is not done because I keep hearing two misconceptions in America repeated:

1) The President of the United States has something to do with gas prices; and 

2) The U.S. can and should be "energy independent."

The first is a myth because of supply and demand.  As for supply, with the exception of cartels, it's all poured into one big pool of oil, figuratively speaking.  As for demand, it's growing in China and other developing countries and there's nothing we can do about it. 

The second is a myth because there is a world market for oil, coal and natural gas, all highly fungible commodities.  America is not Venezuela and Obama is not Hugo Chavez: it's not "our" oil and gas, we don't nationalize it.  It belongs to huge MNCs like Shell and BP.

It does make sense to talk about "energy security," which Roger Altman explains: 

"Let's get to the point where the amount we import from rogue or potentially rogue nations who might be hostile to us is down to a point where, if suddenly that supply was interrupted or shut off, we go right on."

Even so, it's a global market and we must keep this caveat in mind:

Increased energy security on the supply side, however, does not mean energy independence on the economic side. A smaller share of the oil we use in the U.S. comes from foreign sources today than was the case a decade ago. But an increase in the world oil price has left U.S. consumers paying more at the gas pump and reminded them of their continued dependence on market events beyond White House control.

So if people want to blame something, blame capitalism.

Can A President Control Prices At The Pump?

By Michel Martin

October 25, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/RiDxuF 

Energy Independence For U.S.? Try Energy Security

By Tom Gjelten

October 25, 2012 | NPR 

URL: http://n.pr/QYAvrGe

Bloomberg: The future now: End to energy scarcity?

Can't believe I missed this article. Read it. It's amazing. Europeans (and Texans !?!) are realizing the benefits of free wind energy today, not in some far-off utopian future. The energy companies are paying people to leave their lights on; and at times they don't know what price to charge because supply outstrips demand.

We are seeing the revolution in renewable energy happen right now. It's upon us. We are talking about, for all intents and purposes, free energy that will never run out. And the power companies are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to profit from it. Well let them try! They enjoyed big government subsidies to build their wind farms and hydroelectric plants, and now... the energy at times is so abundant it costs almost nothing!

In the short term I'm sure they'll successfully lobby the government to spend more money to improve electricity transmission grids so that they can sell their excess energy to markets not served by wind or hydroelectric and make a profit. But just imagine when everybody is using wind, hydroelectric, solar, and other renewables wherever they are feasible. What happens when there are no more technologically backwards, fossil-fuel dependent regions or countries to sell their excess power to?

Dare I say it?... Utopia. An end to scarcity. Economics turned on its head.

It's an exciting time to be alive to see changes like this happening.

Windmill Boom Cuts Electricity Prices in Europe

By Jeremy van Loon

April 23, 2010 | Bloomberg

On windy nights in northern Germany, consumers are paid to keep the lights on.

Twice this year, the nation's 21,000 wind turbines pumped out so much power that utilities reduced customer bills for using the surplus electricity. Since the first rebate came with little fanfare at 5 a.m. one October day in 2008, payments have risen as high as 500.02 euros ($665) a megawatt-hour, about as much as a small factory or 1,000 homes use in 60 minutes.

The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers. Electricity-network managers have even ordered windmills offline at times to trim supplies. That hurts profit for wind-farm operators, said Christian Kjaer, head of the European Wind Energy Association, which represents RWE AG of Germany, Spain's Iberdrola SA and Dong Energy A/S of Denmark.

"We're seeing that wind energy lowers prices, which is great for the consumers," Kjaer said at his group's conference in Warsaw this week. "We as producers have to acknowledge that this means operating the existing plant fewer hours a year, and this has an effect on investors" and profit.

After years of getting government incentives to install windmills, operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe's biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years, according to a study this week by Poeyry, a Helsinki-based industry consultant.

Wind Capacity

Germany has doubled capacity to generate power from wind since 2002 and has turbines producing about 7.5 percent of the nation's electricity, according to the German Wind Energy Association. That compares with 4.8 percent for the European Union and about 1 percent in the U.S. The turbines operate about a third of the time and are idle in calm weather.

"Wind is playing an important role in spot-price volatility because it's very difficult to predict when more power is coming on line," said Ruxandra Haradau-Doeser, an analyst at Bankhaus Metzler in Frankfurt.

The erratic nature of weather makes it difficult for utilities to estimate by how much wind power pushes down revenue they earn from competing energy sources such as natural gas. A spokeswoman at Bilbao, Spain-based Iberdrola, the world's largest wind-power operator, declined to estimate.

Spanish power prices fell an annual 26 percent in the first quarter because of the surge in supplies from wind and hydroelectric production, the Spanish wind-industry trade group said in a statement yesterday on its Web site.

Negative Prices

RWE, Germany's second-largest utility, minimizes the risks of having to pay consumers to use power by using a "broad" range of different generation technologies in different markets, a spokesman for the company said. Rebates, or negative prices, do not have a big negative effect on the company, he said.

"Negative electricity prices happen when supply outstrips demand and we literally don't know where to put it," Peter Smits, head of central Europe at Swiss power-equipment maker ABB Ltd., said in an interview on April 20 in Hanover. "We will see this happen more often in the future."

One solution is more investment in transmission systems to move power from northern Germany wind farms to heavy industry in the south, he said. "Power transmission is the bottleneck."

Power trading needs to be expanded further, Kjaer said. Tying European markets together, already done among France, the Netherlands and Belgium, lets temporary surpluses flow toward electricity-poor zones. Germany plans to join them on Sept. 7.

Price Volatility

Trading more electricity across markets reduces price volatility, spreading any excess capacity from wind and solar power plants across a broader area, he said.

Storing electricity may be another fix. In Scandinavia, Danish wind power is used to pump water into Norwegian and Swedish reservoirs and later released to drive hydroelectric plants when the wind is not blowing.

Nord Pool, the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.-owned Scandinavian power bourse, last year took steps to encourage generators to limit production by implementing a minimum price. The most generators would pay users to take their power is 200 euros per megawatt hour if there is excess electricity from too much wind.

The measures are meant to "increase the effectiveness of the market forcing power generators to consider reducing their electricity generation or having to pay for delivering electricity," the company said on its Web site.

Wind's impact on prices results from its "low marginal costs," which pushes more expensive technologies including natural gas and coal out of the market, the Poeyry study said. Fossil-fuel burning relies on fuel, which can boost the price of electricity from those sources.

Negative Power Prices

Texas had so-called negative power prices in the first half of 2008 because wind turbines in the western part of the state weren't adequately linked with more populated regions in the east, according to the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas.

Until there's more integration and better transmission grids, prices probably will fluctuate, leading to negative prices, in which payment to consumers is reflected as a discount on their monthly bills.

That hasn't yet stopped the expansion of wind power. Britain now has wind turbines with the capacity to generate 1 gigawatt of power offshore, enough for 653,000 homes, the industry group RenewableUK said today.

China WindPower Group Ltd., Iberdrola and Duke Energy Corp. will lead development of an estimated $65 billion of wind farms, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Around the world, the potential output of electricity from wind is already 157.9 gigawatts, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, a Brussels-based industry group.

Projects in Danger?

"I haven't yet seen that negative pricing is a danger to new projects," said Andrew Garrad, chief executive officer of GL Garrad Hassan, a wind consulting company. "We do need to get the right market mechanisms in place" to better integrate wind power into energy grids.

Wind power is as cheap as electricity made from burning coal on windy days, and those lower costs drive down power prices. In parts of Texas, some utilities are using wind power because it's the cheapest form of energy, said Garrad.

China is the most attractive nation for developing wind energy, followed by the U.S. and Germany, Ernst & Young said yesterday in a study. The consultant surveyed factors such as unexploited energy resources, power rates, taxes and financing.

James Woolsey: 'Destroy oil as a strategic commodity'

It seems as if neocon, Iraq War proponent, and ex-spook James Woolsey has found Jesus, so to speak, on the energy issue. He actually makes some salient points about what "energy independence" really means.

It was news to me that oil releases carcinogenic particulates into the air which cause tens of thousands of deaths each year in the U.S.

If Oil Were Like Salt, Could U.S. Kick The Habit?

With Scott Simon

June 26, 2010 | Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR

SCOTT SIMON, host: Every president - Democratic and Republican - since Richard Nixon has vowed to strive to make the United States energy independent. Forty years later, human beings have landed on the moon, human hearts are routinely transplanted, communism has collapsed, and silicon chips have made it possible to pack a library-worth of information into a device smaller than your thumb.

So why hasn't the United States or any nation become energy independent?

Jim Woolsey is the chairman of Woolsey Partners and a former director of Central Intelligence. He specializes in a range of alternative energy and security issues. He joins us in our studios. Thanks very much for being with us.

Mr. JIM WOOLSEY (Former CIA Director): Good to be with you, Scott.

SIMON: So what are some of the obstructions, technological, economic and political?

Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, in part we haven't been working frequently on the right problem. There are two energy systems essentially in the U.S. One is transportation - that's at 70 percent oil - and the other is the electricity grid - and that's over half fueled by coal and then natural gas, nuclear, hydro and others. They don't have very much to do with one another now.

Back in the '70s it was different. Oil fired power plants, provided about 20 percent of the country's electricity. So, if you were building a nuclear power plant or a wind farm in the '70s, you could well be replacing oil directly. Today, you're not.

SIMON: So when people talk about generating alternative sources of energy - and it often is things like wind or solar - that's not necessarily addressing the problem of foreign oil dependence.

Mr. WOOLSEY: It's not really addressing the problem of foreign oil dependence. No, that that doesn't have much to do with it and won't for many years.

SIMON: So where does that leave us?

Mr. WOOLSEY: In a way, there's been too much emphasis on the foreign side of this. Yes, we import well over half our oil now and that's a bad thing and we borrow a billion dollars a day essentially to import oil. But producing the oil domestically helps solve the balance of payments problem, but that's about all it does. It will not interfere with OPEC's domination of oil.

Something close to 80 percent of the world's proven reserves of oil are in OPEC states. And they are the low-cost producers and they have the big reserves. So they're going to be effectively running the international oil trade and running the cartel that runs it even if we drill more domestically. And so they're going to run the system.

We have to effectively destroy oil as a strategic commodity. Not destroy oil, but destroy its strategic role, its dominance of transportation.

SIMON: Well, that's why we've asked you here. It sound attractive. How do you do it?

Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, I think you want to focus on existing infrastructure and existing vehicles, and there are several things that could be done relatively quickly. One - and the administration is doing this, I think, and various people on the Hill, encouraging moving toward electrification. Particularly, I think, plug-in hybrids.

Another is improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines. There are a number of start-up companies that are inventing computer chips and valves and all kinds of things that you can use to modify existing engines and existing vehicles to get something like a 20, 30 percent improvement in fuel efficiency.

You can also encourage the use of biofuels generally. Require the automobile manufacturers much more rapidly than we're now requiring them to move to what's called an open-standard, flexible fuel vehicles. It just requires them to change the kind of plastic in the fuel line of the car and a bit of software -40, 50 dollars a vehicle - in the manufacturing process.

And that, I think, would an extremely positive step. One reason it would be positive is that we've got a serious health risk problem from using petroleum products. The fine particulates that are carried into the atmosphere by what's called aromatics - benzene, toluene, xylene - which is what the oil companies now use to increase octane, are highly carcinogenic.

It really looks as if tens of thousands of deaths from malignancy a year and hundreds of millions of dollars in added health care costs are caused by these fine particulates, which the oil companies have a special waiver on, essentially. If you run a chemical plant, you can't put benzene, toluene, xylene into the atmosphere, but they're permitted to do it because it's from a mobile source like gasoline in a car.

SIMON: People often point out you can burn oil, it's affordable - that's why it's good for cars. There's a reason why people use oil.

Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, it does carry a lot of energy in a relatively small space. But at least, as far as I'm concerned, that's about where its advantages stop, and there are just a number of things that are in the works that are going to give oil a real run for its money. Some of them are going to need some initial help, but I think the government role could largely be one of a Teddy Roosevelt-style trust buster - going after oil's cartel and oil's dominance of transportation, to break it.

Same thing happened to salt in the very early 20th century. Salt was a strategic commodity for thousands of years. It was the only way to preserve meat, countries went to war over salt mines. At the beginning of the 20th century, the coming of the electric grids, meant that all of a sudden refrigeration and freezing was available affordably and salt's dominance just fell apart within a relatively few years. That's what we need to do to oil. We need to make it as boring as salt is today.

SIMON: Thank you, Mr. Woolsey.

Mr. WOOLSEY: Thank you.

SIMON: Jim Woolsey, chairman of Woolsey Partners and former director of the CIA.

NYT: How wind can break

All you wind hatas will love this article. I thought this particular paragraph was interesting:

"The cost and hassle of transporting the huge, heavy turbines has led to interest in manufacturing turbines in the United States, rather than in Europe. Last year 24 states opened, expanded or announced turbine manufacturing plants, according to the American Wind Energy Association. By value, about half of turbine parts are now manufactured in the United States, said Mr. Dunlop of the wind association."

See, the free market wants to break into wind!

Slow, Costly and Often Dangerous Road to Wind Power

By Kate Galbraith

July 22, 2009 | New York Times

U.S. trails China, EU in green investments

U.S. trailing China, EU in 'green' investments
By Ben Furnas
April 20, 2009 | Center for American Progress

A February analysis by HSBC Global Research in Hong Kong projects that nearly 40 percent of China's proposed $586 billion stimulus plan—$221 billion over two years—is going toward public investment in renewable energy, low-carbon vehicles, high-speed rail, an advanced electric grid, efficiency improvements, and other water-treatment and pollution controls. This stimulus is on top of historic levels of government spending and private investment in renewable technology, energy efficiency, and low-carbon growth all across China. The upshot: China, according to a recent analysis, is "the largest alternative energy producer in the world in terms of installed generating capacity."

 

This massive stimulus plan will spend over 3 percent of China's 2008 gross domestic product annually in 2009 and 2010 on green investments—more than six times America's green stimulus spending as a percentage of our respective economies. This is about $12.6 million every hour over the next two years. In the United States, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act invests $112 billion in comparable green priorities over the next two years, about half as much as China, according to HSBC. This represents less than half of one percent of our 2008 gross domestic product.

President Barack Obama has proposed additional public investment in renewable energy research of $15 billion annually, paid for by charging dirty energy corporations for their pollution. While this would amount to just one tenth of one percent of America's 2008 GDP, it would be a good start. With this money, the United States would finally join China and dozens of other nations across the world in providing public investment for renewable energy, including Japan, Germany, Canada, France, South Korea, Denmark, and Spain.

[By contrast,] in a series of energy bills in 2001, 2003, and 2005, the Bush administration plowed billions of dollars into dirty energy—oil, coal, and nuclear—while neglecting clean renewable energy industries. The 2001 energy bill gave 80 percent of its value to tax breaks for oil, gas, nuclear, and coal companies. The 2003 energy bill, drafted in secret with Vice President Dick Cheney and members of the oil, gas, coal, and electric industries, gave $23.5 billion to dirty energy and loosened environmental regulations. Finally, while the 2005 bill contained a token level of investment in renewable energy, it also provided even more support for dirty energy, offering $27 billion in subsidies for coal, oil, and nuclear energy.

 

But as the Bush administration doubled down on the energy of the past, nations across the world invested in the future. Japan, China, and European countries zoomed past the United States, with a combination of dirty energy regulations, public investments, and private market incentives.

In 2006, according to the most recent data from the Renewable Energy Policy Network, the United States, the world's largest economy, invested less in new capacity for renewable energy than either the EU-25 or China. In fact, according to the most recent data, the entire United States invests less in renewable energy per year than the country of Germany, which boasts less than one-third the population of the United States and an economy less than one-fourth our size.

 

The imperative for renewable sources of energy, energy efficiency, and green transportation and power infrastructure is clear. And yet, we continue to neglect these priorities while plowing tens of billions of dollars of subsidies into polluting and wildly profitable oil and gas companies that create far fewer jobs and exacerbate global warming.

President Obama's energy plan would eliminate $30 billion in giveaways to oil and gas companies and make polluting energy companies pay for their global warming pollution in order to invest in renewable energy infrastructure and cut taxes for 95 percent of working American families. This is the way to go.

More Drilling Won't Help...But Do it Anyway

Although the economic facts support those opposed to drilling, I still think we should open up ANWR and maybe the OCS to drilling, if that's what it takes to get Republicans to support more tax credits and investments for alternative energy. And 20 years from now, when gas prices haven't gone down thanks to increased domestic drilling, maybe we will recall this debate, and acknowledge who was serving the American people, and who was serving Big Oil.

Will More Drilling Mean Cheaper Gas?
By Bryan Walsh
June 18, 2008 | Time.com

On Wednesday morning President George W. Bush urged Congress to overturn a 26-year ban on offshore oil drilling in the U.S. and open a part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to petroleum exploration. Flanked by the secretaries of Energy and the Interior, Bush also proposed streamlining the construction process for new oil refineries, and explained that these moves would "take pressure off gas prices over time by expanding the amount of American-made oil and gasoline." Coming a day after Republican presumptive presidential nominee John McCain made a similar appeal to enhance domestic oil exploration, Bush was sending an unsubtle election-year message to the American public: I care about the economic toll of $4-a-gallon gas, and Democrats in Congress, who have opposed such an expansion, don't.

But there's a flaw in that logic: even if tomorrow we opened up every square mile of the outer continental shelf to offshore rigs, even if we drilled the entire state of Alaska and pulled new refineries out of thin air, the impact on gas prices would be minimal and delayed at best. A 2004 study by the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that drilling in ANWR would trim the price of gas by 3.5 cents a gallon by 2027. (If oil prices continue to skyrocket, the savings would be greater, but not by much.) Opening up offshore areas to oil exploration — currently all coastal areas save a section of the Gulf of Mexico are off-limits, thanks to a congressional ban enacted in 1982 and supplemented by an executive order from the first President Bush — might cut the price of gas by 3 to 4 cents a gallon at most, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And the relief at the pump, such as it is, wouldn't be immediate — it would take several years, at least, for the oil to begin to flow, which is time enough for increased demand from China, India and the rest of the world to outpace those relatively meager savings. "Right now the price of oil is set on the global market," says Kevin Lindemer, executive managing director of the energy markets group for the research firm Global Insight. President Bush's move "would not have an impact."

The reason is simple: the U.S. has an estimated 3% of global petroleum reserves but consumes 24% of the world's oil. Offshore territories and public lands like ANWR that don't allow drilling may contain up to 75 billion barrels of oil, according to the EIA. That may sound like a lot, but it's not enough to make a significant difference in a world where global oil demand is expected to rise 30% by 2030, to nearly 120 million barrels a day. At best, greatly expanding domestic drilling might eventually lower the proportion of oil the U.S. imports — currently about 60% of its total supply — but petroleum is a global commodity, and the world market would soak up any additional American production. "This is a drop in the bucket," says Gernot Wagner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Still, with Americans hurting at the pump, it may be difficult for environmentalists and other opponents of increased domestic drilling to resist the push for more oil, whatever the cost. As recently as his 2000 presidential run, McCain had been against offshore drilling, but he changed that position Tuesday, arguing that individual states should decide for themselves. (He remains against drilling ANWR, however, pointing out that "we called it a 'refuge' for a reason.' ") The Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist — considered a possible vice-presidential candidate — also flip-flopped, backing McCain's position. Though Democratic Senator Barack Obama and most of his party are against the proposed expansion, McCain and his supporters may have the public on their side: a recent Gallup poll found that 57% of Americans believe we should open up new territories to drilling. "It could help in the long term," says Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University. Still, he acknowledges that even expanded drilling is unlikely to bring prices down much.

Though offshore drilling conjures up fears of catastrophic spills, the petroleum industry rightly argues that safety measures have improved considerably in recent years. A 2003 report by the National Research Council found that only 1% of the oil that polluted U.S. waters came from petroleum operations, like the offshore drilling platforms that run in the Gulf of Mexico — which also weathered Hurricane Katrina without massive spills. If it can be done in an environmentally friendly fashion — and with oil companies themselves footing the bill — opening up some new territory to drilling might be worth it. The reality is that our economy will run on petroleum for the foreseeable future, and that while investing in alternatives is the only way to secure truly low-cost energy over the long term, we'll still need oil for decades more. But any attempt to increase supply must be coupled with even heavier investment in energy efficiency and other methods to decrease oil demand — an approach that, to his credit, McCain has said will be a key part of his energy policy (although in the Senate he has skipped or voted against every fuel efficiency bill since 1990, according to the League of Conservation Voters). In any case, Bush's plan is unlikely to be realized — the Democratic-controlled Congress remains against it, and Bush can't open up the new territory on his own.

ively small amount of petroleum, we're missing out on the opportunity to truly break our addiction to crude. This week the Senate again failed to renew the tax credit for renewable energies like solar and wind; the credit, which expires at the end of the year, is key to the healthy growth of low-carbon alternatives. Without it, "the industry will simply stop," says Santiago Seage, CEO of the Spanish company Abengoa Solar. With energy demand skyrocketing, we'll need more oil, and alternatives like solar, and demand-side measures like toughened auto fuel efficiency standards or tax incentives for Americans to purchase less wasteful cars. We'll have to include action on global warming, like the recently defeated Warner-Lieberman carbon cap and trade bill. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that under the bill, U.S. petroleum consumption would have dropped by nearly half by 2030 — savings far in excess of the amount of oil we could ever pull from Alaska or the coasts. "We can't drill our way out of this and we can't conserve our way out either," says Bullock. "We need both." Fair enough. But the sad truth is that neither drilling nor conservation will have an immediate effect on rising gas prices, even if they do have an immediate impact on the presidential race.

Rev. Rausch: More supply, or less demand?

Is more supply, or less demand, the answer to oil?
By Rev. John Rausch
June 5, 2008 Spero News


With the recent spike in gasoline prices, politicians and pundits have begun calling again for energy independence for America. Ethanol refiners continue lobbying Congress for massive subsidies, while electric utilities and coal producers promote clean coal and a nuclear renaissance.

Oil executives complaining that U.S. restrictions have hampered developing new sources of oil, advocate opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. "Energy independence" has morphed into code for "drill it all, dig it all and double it all." For the present, traditional forms of energy are needed to find the glide path into the terrain of alternative energy sources, yet in the future, the emphasis cannot rest solely on supply.

People of faith recognize the market functions by supply and demand, and now, at least in the near term, some demands appear unsustainable and too costly for the common good. To produce enough ethanol to fill one tank of gas in an SUV takes 450 pounds of corn. To supply all U.S. gasoline through ethanol would require planting 71 percent of American farmland in fuel crops.

In 1950 a single family car might be parked near a house averaging 1,100 square feet, but in 2005 probably several cars would stand in driveways of houses that doubled to 2,340 square feet with fewer occupants and lots more space to heat and cool.

Currently, the U.S. with less than 5 percent of the world's population uses one third of the world's electricity produced annually. With drained wetlands, clear-cut forests and paved-over top soil the capacity of the planet to carry life is rapidly being exhausted by human habits and lifestyles.

If energy were the coin of the realm, that coin would have two worn sides: first, the problems associated with global warming, and second, the challenges posed by energy security.

Global warming could initiate a new sense of community among all countries, since "everyone lives down stream" of hostile climate change. About one hundred million people in the world live one meter above sea level. With increased global warming exacerbated by burning fossil fuels, the melting ice caps would inflict unimaginable flooding of these poor populations, plus introduce diseases previously unknown in temperate regions.

Known world petroleum reserves will last 80 to 100 years, natural gas 70 to 90 years. The geopolitical imperatives to secure control of energy resources mount. Question: was the invasion of Iraq more about weapons of mass destruction or controlling the oil supply? People of faith see a simpler lifestyle and a more intentional use of resources as an essential component of peace building.

Pope Benedict XVI in his 2008 World Day of Peace Message said, "We need to care for the environment: It has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion." The "good of all" extends to succeeding generations who equally deserve a healthy, and not degraded, earth.

Two approaches make sense. First, mount intense and massive national investment on the scale of the moon race to develop renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.) and high-tech energy (hydrogen-generated power, fuel cells, nuclear fusion, etc.).

Second, adopt an ethic of "less and local" to address the short term urgency. More oil can be "found" in Detroit by designing more fuel-efficient cars than from ANWR. More electricity can be "generated" from retrofitting homes with better insulation than from another coal-fired plant.

A new energy consciousness begins with numerous personal choices that collectively grow into the political will to change.

Rev. John Rausch, a Glenmary priest, teaches, writes and organizes from Stanton, Kentucky, in central Appalachia.