Frontpagemag.com Victor Davis Hanson July 5, 2006
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism was discredited as an unworkable–and often murderous–alternative to consumer capitalism. Eastern Europe was freed and began to prosper in a manner unimaginable just a decade earlier. China and India jettisoned statism, and found prosperity by emulating Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. South America was democratizing and began to liberalize its economies (with mixed success).
Here in the U.S., Americans grew freer and richer than at any time in their history. In contrast, Europe’s creeping democratic socialism left much of the continent with low economic growth, high unemployment, a demographic crisis, and a growing cultural pessimism. In short, there was global proof that the more individual freedom and capitalism, the more the good life followed.
Why, then, are socialists such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia now expanding an anti-capitalist bloc in Latin America–nationalizing companies, jailing dissidents, and whipping up the cult of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro from Peru to Mexico? Why here at home, when the stock market is near all-time highs, the unemployment rate low, and home ownership at record levels, with interest rates and inflation both in check, do the American people express little confidence in their economy and President Bush’s leadership?
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Well Halleluiah! A conservative has finally realized that we need to lessen our dependency on fossil fuels. Mr. Hanson focuses on the fact that it makes our nation vulnerable to blackmail by oil-producing rogue-states. This is in fact the same point comedian Bill Maher tried to make several years ago in his book, “When you Ride Alone, you ride with Bin Ladin”., a tiltle no doubt inspired by the American World War II poster that read, “When you ride alone yoy ride with Hitler”.
Global warming and air quality are the other reasons why America needs to reduce it’s dependency on petroleum, although saying so means having to acknowlege that mr. Gore may be correct after all. But tf Hanson’s warning provides a face-saving way for conservatives to embrace conservation and the development of alternative forms of energy, I won’t complain. Hanson and other conservatives should be warned that their fear of the influence of oil producing states put’s them on a collision course with corpoorate giants like Exxon and GM. As the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” points out, these powerful entities depend on America’s addiction to foreign oil for their massive profits.
In 1997, General Motors’ EV-1 was the fastest, most efficient car ever built. It ran on electricity and produced no emissions. The documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car” explores why the seemingly perfect car never made it into production and instead ended up crushed in a junkyard in the Arizona desert.
A survey of 100 foreign policy experts from both parties conducted by Foreign Policy Magazine found a strong consensus that America is losing the war on terror.
High among their concerns is America’s dangerous dependency on foreign oil.
http://web1.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2006/TI-index/energypolicy.html
Let’s remember how we got into this fix: Dick Cheney convened a secret meeting of oil and gas executives in 2001 who helped him form an energy policy centered around the continued exploration and use of petroleum. Efforts to promote conservation and alternative forms of energy were ridiculed and abandoned by the Bush administration. Conservatives signaled their support for this policy by likewise attacking environmentalists and supporting the Bush adminstration policy.
Once again we see the source of the problem is a right-wing ideology embraced with near religious fervor by conservatives who contemptuously dismiss all facts to the contrary (as they did with Iraq and are doing now with global warming) only to be proven wrong after the damage has been done.
“A conservative has finally realized that we need to lessen our dependency on fossil fuels.”
Actually, he said something a little more subtle. His point was that we should lesson our dependency on oil from third world dictatorships. He is all for drilling for more oil here at home, converting shale to oil, etc. (it’s near the end). He is also for more nuke power, which is where everything is going anyways. The engineering is now better and quite safe. It’s going to get even better in the future.
“Global warming and air quality are the other reasons why America needs to reduce it’s dependency on petroleum,”
Not true – we have had this argument…
“In 1997, General Motors’ EV-1 was the fastest, most efficient car ever built”
What have you been smoking? Electric cars are not nearly as efficient (and certainly not as fast) as cars based on the internal combustion engine. This is a modern engineering fact. The amount of energy, and thus the amount of pollution, to charge an electric car is GREATER than the amount of energy it takes to refine oil, transport it, fill up the tank and power the car based on the internal combustion engine. This equation is only broken if the source of the electricity is from a nuke plant. This little engineering inconvenience also applies to the “fuel cell” car (i.e. it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen/oxygen than if you simply burned oil).
Now, the left is full of conspiracy theories as to why the modern engineering conundrums have not been “solved”. If only the left had control of our research institutions, engineering universities, and other bodies of “higher learning” problems like this would have been solved…oh wait, they DO control the universities…;)
Christopher: Have you ever heard of “Hubert’s Peak“?
Marion King Hubert was a widely respected geophysicist working for Shell who created a model in 1956 that predicted that production of oil from conventional sources would peak in the continental United States between 1965 and 1970, and worldwide within “about half a century” from publication. Hubbert, noticed that oil discoveries graphed over time, tended to follow a bell shape curve. He posited that the rate of oil production would follow a similar curve.
Hubbert’s theory as it applies to oil extraction in the United states was proven correct. US oil production did peak in the 1970’s and has been falling ever since. Even if we did foul the pristine Alaskan wilderness and the Pacific and Florida coasts drilling for crude oil, the amount of Petroleum extracted would satisfy our needs for only a few years at most.
According to Hubert’s theory world oil production will peak sometime between 2005 ans 2010.
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
Christopher: You must overcome your tendency to see down as up, back as front, science as myth and myth as reality. Realize that oil is a “finite resource“. Say it with me slowly now, FI-NITE.
The word finite is deifined as follows:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/finite
Do you get it? Reserves of oil are running out and nothing can stop that. We can prolong, but cannot prevent the inevitable. Having an energy policy based on Petroleum is like building a beach-house on ground slowly eroding into the ocean.
True, oil is finite. However, there is enough of it to burn (and burn, and burn) for the next 300-500 years, depending on what quack you want to listen to. It is you who have been listening to myth, my friend.
Having an energy policy based on “alternative resources” is wishful thinking at it’s worst – for it leads us down the path of hollow progressive promises. Petroleum is the basis of our wealth, and everything that we consider “good” and “bad” about modern life. Nothing known today even is even within 1/2 of 1 percent as efficient, unless you include nuke power. Wind, solar, agriculture based alcohol, tidal, etc. – not one of these and not all of them put together can come close to sustaining our economy – let alone the rest of the world. Now, unless you are talking about the widespread use of nuke power, we have something to talk about. Otherwise, it’s all Joseph Campbell from here…;)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005MEVQ/104-2718352-8506315?v=glance&n=130
Christopher writes: “True, oil is finite. However, there is enough of it to burn (and burn, and burn) for the next 300-500 years, depending on what quack you want to listen to.”
I suppose we’ll never “run out” of oil, but there’s all sorts of evidence that we are approaching peak production of oil. Worldwide production of oil has remained essentially flat since 2005. Many fields around the world have reached peak production. Oil production in the U.S. peaked in 1971.
The problem is that demand isn’t flat but increases exponentially, around 2% annually, at current rates. This means that demand for oil would double every 36 years. The consequence is that even if there is much more oil than we think, it wouldn’t have that much effect on the life of the resource. As they say in the oil “bidness,” when you have exponential growth in the consumption of a finite resource, the starting quantity of that resources is irrelevant.
For example, given annual demand of 30 billion barrels a year and 2% growth rate of consumption, 3 trillion in total reserves would last 56 years. Double the reserves to 6 trillion, and then the resource lasts 82 years. Triple the reserves to 9 trillion, and then the resource lasts 99 years.
The problem is that people think that 9 trillion in reserve with 30 billion annual usage works out to a 300 year supply. It does, but only at current rates of consumption, which unfortunately is not the situation. And we have about the same situation with coal and natural gas.
So the cheap energy plane is going to land. The only question is whether it will be a hard or soft landing. I don’t like nuclear power, but as Christopher says that may be the only solution, inasmuch as it is a solution. We can make the landing softer by taking action NOW. But given how things work in the U.S. I don’t see that happening.