The Fuel of Democracy?

The other day, I heard someone (perhaps Glenn Beck … I admit that I don’t recall) refer to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as “Fidel Castro with oil.” Not a bad description, really. If not for the importance of oil, Hugo Chavez would be nothing more than Fidel Castro was — a noisy opponent of the US without enough capital to make his threats real. As it is, he has the ability to do a great deal of damage in Central America.

This got me thinking about the importance of the oil market, and who benefits from it. Saudi Arabia, for example. Iran. The bin Laden family, in particular.

Do you notice a pattern here?

Rush Limbaugh often refers to oil as the fuel of democracy, but what does it really fuel? Who’s really making money off of the oil market?

Put another way … if we had spent the past thirty years devising effective alternatives to petroleum, where would al-Qaeda be? Where would Hugo Chavez be? Would anyone care?

We have carefully ignored opportunities to look beyond oil. There are those who say, of course, that looking for alternatives to oil is wasted effort. I see no defense for that position. Does anyone really believe that 200 years from now we’ll be using petroleum? Of course not.

Whether it be solar power, nuclear fission, fusion, naquada, Tylium, or matter/anti-matter intermix, everyone knows that we’re going to be using something else. (Bonus points to the first person who can say where I got those last three — no cheating!) Why, then, would we not want to find that new source of power now? Drilling for oil in US reserves might help reduce our demand for foreign oil, but replacing oil as a primary energy source will literally abolish the oil market. The king of Saudi Arabia might have nearly limitless oil reserves, but no one cares who has the largest inventory of buggy whips.

Politically, of course, the oil industries are very well-connected. It is important to understand how much that money controls. With that much money in play, politicians are going to be sympathetic to oil companies, and will therefore take stands for oil … and will work to convince people that oil, not an alternative, is the way to go.

In one of the few times I will say this … Pres. Jimmy Carter was right to have solar panels installed on the West Wing of the White House in 1979, and Pres. Ronald Reagan was completely wrong to remove them. Reagan removed the panels because the energy crisis of the day was over … which means that it was a short-sighted and poor decision. As a party, Republicans have consistently spoken of alternative energy sources (with the exception of nuclear power) as if wanting to use them was akin to erecting a statue Lenin in every town square.

This is worse than foolish. Whether you accept the premise of global warming and pollution concerns, there are strategic and business reasons to want to move the energy paradigm. If we were the leaders in new energy technology, rather than just participants in a market controlled largely by other nations, then we would be more completely sovereign in terms of energy. Even if we drill for oil in Alaska, the price we get in the market will be determined largely by Hugo Chavez, Ahmed Ahmadinejad, and other such friends of democracy and freedom. The profits will go to such lovers of freedom as the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family.

There is no good reason for the United States to be at other nations’ mercy for energy, or even to be participating in an energy market that is under the control of other nations. The US has sent people to the moon and brought them back safely. No other nation has even tried. Do we really believe that the US can’t do better for energy than oil?  Of course not. I refuse to believe that the nation of Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Samuel Morse can’t even consider thinking outside the box when it comes to energy.

Of course, there are those who note that some of these technologies need startup money. Interest in ethanol has been condemned as opposing the free market. Of course, the energy market is hardly free as it is … oil companies receive billions of dollars in subsidies. I’ve never heard a coherent defense of this. The truth? It goes back to that money that oil companies spend on lobbying and donations. For those of us at the grassroots level, that isn’t supposed to sway us.

It is long since time that we took a real look at our energy production and thought about how to end the influence of foreign — and distinctly hostile! — powers over our energy markets. It is long since time that we put American ingenuity to work on this problem, with the real and meaningful support of the government. Not to support one form of agriculture over another, but meaningfully to improve our energy — and therefore national — security. To make us more secure while taking cash from our enemies is an opportunity too good to pass up.

Sadly, that’s exactly what we keep on doing.

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