National Energy Policy?

We will answer for our gluttony. If this is (fair & balanced) eschatology, so be it.

[x The Chronicle of Higher Education]
THE NATURAL WORLD: The End of Easy Oil
By MALCOLM G. SCULLY

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist or a Michael Moore enthusiast to think that Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues in the Bush administration are being disingenuous when they declare that the war in Iraq is not about oil.

In fact, according to the authors of two new books, most foreign-policy and many domestic decisions made by the current administration -- and by its predecessors going back to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt -- have been shaped, overtly or covertly, by a desire to assure a secure supply of cheap petroleum for America's economic and military needs. And, the authors of the books conclude, maintaining that "energy security" will become more difficult, more dangerous, and more likely to produce violence in the years ahead.

Our petroleum habit will have growing influence on both geopolitical and economic issues, according to Paul Roberts in The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World, published by Houghton Mifflin, and Michael T. Klare, in Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, published by Metropolitan Books.

As Roberts, a writer who focuses on economic and environmental issues, says: "Although we will not run out of oil tomorrow, we are nearing the end of what might be called easy oil. Even in the best of circumstances, the oil that remains will be more costly to find and produce and less dependable than the oil we are using today."

Klare, a professor of peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College and defense correspondent for The Nation, suggests that the United States has never resolved the inherent tension between our need for assured supplies of petroleum to keep the economy cooking and our growing reliance on overseas sources of that oil, especially from areas, like the Persian Gulf, that have a long and continuing history of instability.

Rather than develop a sustained strategy for reducing our reliance on such sources, he says, American leaders "have chosen to securitize oil -- that is, to cast its continued availability as a matter of 'national security,' and thus something that can be safeguarded through the use of military force."

Klare argues that our demands for energy and those of other major powers will require the petroleum-rich Gulf states to "boost their combined oil output by 85 percent between now and 2020. ... Left to themselves, the Gulf countries are unlikely to succeed; it will take continued American intervention and the sacrifice of more and more American blood to come even close. The Bush administration has chosen to preserve America's existing energy posture by tying its fortunes to Persian Gulf oil."

Even more worrisome, Klare says, is the intense and growing competition among countries such as the United States, China, India, and those in the European Community over petroleum supplies. "This competition is already aggravating tensions in several areas, including the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea basins," he writes. "And although the great powers will no doubt seek to avoid clashing directly, their deepening entanglement in local disputes is bound to fan the flames of regional conflicts and increase the potential for major conflagrations."

That's pretty alarming stuff, and some people may be tempted to dismiss Roberts's and Klare's analyses as anti-Bush, anti-oil rhetoric. But the questions they raise transcend approval or disapproval of any one administration, and go to the core of whether any country can -- purposefully and without vast disruptions -- make the transition from an economy dependent on one finite resource to an economy based on renewable, nonpolluting resources.

The authors argue that such a transition would be difficult in the best of times, and that these are not the best of times.

Roberts notes, for instance, that the development of renewable alternatives to petroleum, such as biofuels, solar power, clean coal, and hydrogen, has not been as rapid or as simple as their promoters had hoped. And even if those alternatives had been developed more fully, he adds, "many of the new fuels and technologies lack high power density and simply will not be able to deliver the same energy punch as the hydrocarbons they replace."

What that means, he says, is that the new technologies must be accompanied by sharp increases in energy efficiency. He is not sanguine about achieving such gains. "In spite of high energy prices and rising concerns about energy security, consumers and policymakers alike have all but stopped talking about the ways we use energy, how much we waste, and what might be changed."

Klare writes that President Bush's choice of Vice President Dick Cheney to conduct a major review of energy policy preordained an antiefficiency outcome. When the National Energy Policy Development Group began its work, in February 2001, he writes, the United States "stood at a crossroads." It could "continue consuming more and more petroleum and sinking deeper and deeper into its dependence on imports," or "it could choose an alternative route, enforcing strict energy conservation, encouraging the use of fuel-efficient vehicles, and promoting the development of renewable energy sources."

While the group's report -- National Energy Policy -- gave lip service to the concepts of conservation and energy self-sufficiency, he says, a close reading "reveals something radically different." The policy "never envisions any reduction in our use of petroleum," Klare writes. "Instead it proposes steps that would increase consumption while making token efforts to slow, but not halt, our dependence on foreign providers."

Given the Bush administration's close ties to the oil-and-gas industry, such an outcome may have been inevitable, Klare says. But even an administration without such links would find it politically risky to move to a radically different energy policy. Like his predecessors, he notes, President Bush "understood that shifting to other sources of energy would entail a change in lifestyle that the American public might not easily accept. ... And so he chose the path of least resistance."

Roberts, who focuses on the question of total energy supply more than on the geopolitical consequences of relying on foreign oil, finds little cause for optimism in our current strategy. The longer we put off the transition to a postpetroleum era, the harder that transition will be, he says, and the more unrest and violence we will encounter.

As oil supplies dwindle, "energy security, always a critical mission for any nation, will steadily acquire greater urgency and priority," he writes. "As it does, international tensions and the risk of conflict will rise, and these growing threats will make it increasingly difficult for governments to focus on longer-term challenges, such as climate or alternative fuels -- challenges that are in themselves critical to energy security, yet which, paradoxically, will be seen as distractions from the campaign to keep energy flowing. ... The more obvious it becomes that an oil-dominated energy economy is inherently insecure, the harder it becomes to move on to something else."

In the meantime, Klare argues, the Bush administration's war on terrorism, the impulse of its neoconservative supporters to spread "democracy" to the Middle East, and our desperate need for stable supplies of oil have merged into a single strategy -- one that will commit us to maintaining military forces in many parts of the world and to using those forces to protect oil fields and supply routes.

"It is getting hard," he writes, "to distinguish U.S. military operations designed to fight terrorism from those designed to protect energy assets."

Many of the authors' arguments and conclusions have been advanced before, and both men fall into the category of "energy pessimists," who do not believe that we will be able to maintain our current levels of oil consumption for as long as agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey and Europe's International Energy Agency predict. Such agencies, Roberts says, "are under intense political pressure to err on the side of wild optimism."

But regardless of whether Klare and Roberts err on the side of pessimism, their message is unsettling: We are headed into uncharted territory, led by a government that seems prepared to use force, when necessary, to preserve the current system. We face growing competition from other countries for a finite resource at a time of growing animosity toward the United States.

It is a message that is moving beyond academic and environmental circles. In a recent "midyear outlook" report, Wachovia Securities, a large investment company, examines the impact of "the end of cheap oil" for investors. "We neither expect, nor wish to dwell on, worst-case scenarios -- but the market knows it is foolhardy to ignore the possibilities," the report says. It warns that with record-high oil prices and many domestic refineries operating at or near capacity, "a disruption somewhere in the production chain could have a greater than normal effect on energy markets."

The war on terror, it adds, "raises the risk that such a disruption would not be an accident."

Malcolm G. Scully is The Chronicle's editor at large.

Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Both W & Kerry Should Answer Who Will Die, And When, And For What!

As I write this, I am listening to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. on the "Diane Rehm Show" on Texas Public Radio via the Internet. Schlesinger maintains that we have recreated the Imperial Presidency and that W will gain passage of the Patriot Act II if he is reelected. How soon we forget and how little we learn from past mistakes. Every time I hear some Rightist proclaim that we must support our president, I want to vomit. In the meantime, our troops are dying and innocent Iraqi men, women, and children are dying at our hands. I remember Robert S. McNamara confessing in Errol Morris' "The Fog of War" that he and others planning the firebombing of Japanese cities during WWII were guilty of war crimes. As McNamara noted, though, the victors are never convicted of war crimes. When Don Imus—on his radio show—calls Rummy, Wolfie, and the Dickster "war criminals," the I-Man is closer to the truth than he realizes. If this is (fair & balanced) genocide, so be it.

[x History News Network]
The Big Question that Needs to Be Asked at the Presidential Debates
By Tom Palaima

If you have seen the film "Black Hawk Down" or read We Were Soldiers Once and Young or visited the Imperial War Museum in London, you might think, as Douglas MacArthur did, that Plato said, "Only the dead have seen an end to war."

Plato could have, but he didn't. It was George Santayana, looking at World War I veterans celebrating in a British pub, who uttered the sad words: "The poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead have seen the end of war." American soldiers see no end to war in Iraq. Yet both presidential candidates have avoided telling us what they will do with our soldiers and our weapons if they are elected in about five weeks.

Do we even want to know? President Bush says he will stand firm. But this is easier to do in Alabama and Washington than in Fallujah. He also now wants other United Nations leaders, or rather their soldiers, to stand firm with our soldiers in the war zone our senators and representatives gave him the authority to create.

Senator John Kerry has his own vague approach to strengthen our shrinking coalition of the increasingly unwilling. European countries whose families still remember the Somme, Stalingrad and Dien Bien Phu will send their soldiers off to a new locus of sorrow. Our one relevant cultural memory, Vietnam, has disappeared in a political shell game concerning old service records and old combat medals.

Will the presidential debates force the candidates to stop playing politics with American and Iraqi lives? Is there any journalist with enough authority and integrity, and plain guts, to be our elder Cato and stay on message with a handful of questions? What do these two men who would be our commander-in-chief for the next four years think of the recent assessment of the leading Iraq expert at the Army War College's strategic studies institute that the insurgency in Iraq cannot be killed by our overwhelming firepower? Is the professor of strategy at the Air War College in need of new glasses when he sees "no ray of light on the Iraqi horizon"? Things have reached the point where Americans deserve straight answers to the kinds of moral questions soldier poet Siegfried Sassoon posed as he waded resolutely out of the killing trenches of World War I and back to London: What are our set aims? What is our time limit for accomplishing them? What price are we willing to pay in human lives? And whose lives will we pay? And where is peace?

We have in the last seventy years increasingly sought and achieved peace through desolation. Since Oswald Spengler published his The Decline of the West after World War I, the United States has been seen, quite rightly, as a Roman civilizing presence in the world. We build things - roads, arenas, luxury villas - and we destroy things with the same energetic efficiency. We use pragmatic Roman methods as we try to shape world affairs to our purposes.

The Roman historian Tacitus put it this way: "Where they make a desolation, they call it peace." Ali Adr, a temporarily dispersed pro-Sadr fighter, I am sure has never read Roman history. But he is bluntly Tacitean: "The Americans destroy, we build." We destroy. And destroying brought a long period of peace, at least in Europe and the United States, until what H.G. Wells would call man's beast nature crept back in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in lower Manhattan. And our response has been the same as ever: overwhelming force.

In April 1967, Martin Luther King reasoned that his own government was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." And we were once openly glad of it. We dropped 1.36 million tons of bombs on Germany. One hundred and sixty thousand tons of bombs incinerated sixty six Japanese cities. We then moved into the atomic age, and Nagasaki and Hirsohima joined the list.

Our men came home, my father and father-in-law among them. We had peace. What Bob Dylan called the "big bombs and death planes" secured that peace.

We thought we had to make it even more secure. So we began dropping 7,078,032 tons of bombs on a single small country in southeast Asia, a thousand pounds for every living soul. Peace came there, too, but no victory. And our men came home, give or take 58,226.

Those whose names are etched in mirrored stone a short distance from White House and Congress died by degrees. No more than 300 in any set battle. At most 543 in a week.

Only the dead see the end of war. But we the living decide who will die, and when, and for what.

And we and our next president need to reach a moral decision. Now.

Tom Palaima teaches Classics in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas. This article was first published by the Sacramento Bee and is reprinted with permission of the author.

Copyright © 2004 Tom Palaima

Christopher Buckley Is A Right-Wing Kinkster!

I like it when a Republican can make me laugh out loud. Most of the Rightists provoke my gag reflex. The Kinkster is another writer who makes me laugh out loud. Neither of the presidential candidates make me laugh out loud. That is why I am supporting Richard (Kinky) Friedman for governor of Texas. I am going to suggest that the Kinkster hire Buckley as his speechwriter. If this is (fair & balanced) levity, so be it.

[x New Yorker]
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
by CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

At no time during these debates shall either candidate move from their designated area behind their respective podiums.
—From the agreement worked out for the Presidential debates.

Paragraph Two: Dress.
Candidates shall wear business attire. At no time during the debates shall either candidate remove any article of clothing, such as tie, belt, socks, suspenders, etc. Candidates shall not wear helmets, padding, girdles, prosthetic devices, or “elevator”-type shoes. Per above, candidates shall not remove shoes or throw same at each other during debate. Once a debate is concluded, candidates shall be permitted to toss articles of clothing, excepting underwear, into the audience for keepsake purposes.

Paragraph Six: Hand gestures.
“Italian,” “French,” “Latino,” “Bulgarian,” or other ethnic-style gestures intended to demean, impugn, or otherwise derogate opponent by casting aspersions on opponent’s manhood, abilities as lover, or cuckold status are prohibited. Standard “American”-style gestures meant to convey honest bewilderment, doubt, etc., shall be permitted. Candidates shall not point rotating index fingers at their own temples to imply that opponent is mentally deranged. Candidates shall at no time insert fingers in their own throats to signify urge to vomit. Candidates shall under no circumstances insert fingers into opponent’s throat.

Paragraph Seventeen A: Bodily fluids-Perspiration.
Debate sponsors shall make every effort to maintain comfortable temperature onstage. Candidates shall make reasonable use of underarm deodorant and other antiperspirant measures, subject to review by Secret Service, before the debates. In the event that perspiration is unavoidable, candidates may deploy one plain white cotton handkerchief measuring eight inches square. Handkerchief may not be used to suggest that opponent wants to surrender in global war on terrorism.

Paragraph Forty-two: Language.
Candidates shall address each other in terms of mutual respect (“Mr. President,” “Senator,” etc.). Use of endearing modifiers (“my distinguished opponent,” “the honorable gentleman,” “Pookie,” “Diddums,” etc.) is permitted. The following terms are specifically forbidden and may not be used until after each debate is formally concluded: “girlie-man,” “draft dodger,” “drunk,” “ignoramus,” “Jesus freak,” “frog,” “bozo,” “wimp,” “toad,” “lickspittle,” “rat bastard,” “polluting bastard,” “lying bastard,” “demon spawn,” “archfiend,” or compound nouns ending in “-hole” or “-ucker.”

Paragraph Fifty-eight: Spousal references.
Each candidate may make one reference to his spouse. All references to consist of boilerplate praise, e.g., “I would not be standing here without [spouse’s first name]” or “[Spouse’s name] would make a magnificent First Lady.” Candidates shall not pose hypothetical scenarios involving violent rape or murder of opponent’s spouse so as to taunt opponent with respect to his views on the death penalty.

Paragraph Ninety-eight: Vietnam.
Neither candidate shall mention the word “Vietnam.” In the event that either candidate utters said word in the course of a debate, the debate shall be concluded immediately and declared forfeit to the third-party candidate.


Christopher Buckley 

Christopher Buckley (son of William F. Buckley) was born in New York in 1952. He graduated with honors from Yale University, shipped out with the Merchant Marine and was managing editor of Esquire magazine at the age of 24. At age 29, he published his first best seller, Steaming To Bamboola: The World of a Tramp Freighter and became chief speechwriter to the Vice President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. Buckley has traveled and adventured far and wide.

Buckley is the author of eleven books, many of them national bestsellers, including Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, No Way To Treat A First Lady, Washington Schlepped Here and Florence of Arabia. Several of them are being developed by Hollywood; “Not,” Buckley remarks wryly, “that anything ever happens, but this hasn’t stopped me from saying of them, ‘Soon to be a major motion picture.’” His books have been translated into over a dozen languages, including Russian and Korean.


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