Bush's Addiction

I am glad to see that I was not the only one disappointed in Bush's nod to the environmental movement in his State of the Union Address last night. Steven Warshawsky of The American Thinker rightly points out how silly this is.

Not only does it smack of Green Party rhetoric -- with all its anti-development baggage -- it misleadingly suggests that there is something bad about America's need for oil.

The simple truth is that our modern, industrial society would not be capable of functioning without copious amounts of inexpensive energy. Unless and until Americans eschew their fear of widespread nuclear power, the only viable source of this energy is oil.

And despite the political instability in the Middle East and elsewhere, oil is still plentiful and cheap by any reasonable historical standards. That is why we continue to import so much of it from abroad, instead of developing additional, and more expensive, domestic energy sources.

Finally, let's not forget that politicians and policy analysts have been issuing dire warnings about America's "addiction" to foreign oil for at least three decades, and today we're richer and more powerful than ever. So I think less rhetoric and more sober thinking is required before we start throwing even more taxpayer money at "alternatives" to oil, such as solar, wind, hydrogen, etc. etc. etc.

It is also nice to see that there is at least some opposition among conservatives to this silliness about energy "dependence".

This is good, because if you think Bush's speech is the first time this notion has been pushed by a major Republican figure (including Bush, come to think of it), you would be sadly mistaken. I've already blogged about it twice here.

First, California's Governor, Arnold Schwartzenegger, was recently lauded by Dick Morris for his aggressively green agenda. I quote Dick Morris:

With financing projected to come one-third each from federal, state and private sources, California will offer hydrogen fuel every few miles in urban areas and at least every 20 miles along the highway system by 2010. Eventually, he and the leaders of Washington, Oregon, Baja California and British Columbia will work together to create a "hydrogen highway" that will run from B.C. (British Columbia) to B.C. (Baja California).

The Schwarzenegger plan calls for state-subsidized production of hydrogen and for tax incentives for those who purchase hydrogen cars. [italics mine]

Second, Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, who may run together in 2008, recently went on a global warming junket to Alaska and came out sounding like they might attempt to run on the Green ticket!

... John McCain (R-AZ), is cosponsoring legislation with Joe Lieberman (D-CT) to limit greenhouse gas emissions from utilities and industry. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) words best summarized the apparently unanimous verdict of the delegation. "I don't think there is any doubt left for anyone who actually looks at the science ... [C]limate change is accelerating."

...

While McCain's presence at the press conference would come as no surprise to many conservatives, that of Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina would. The American Conservative Union rates his voting record as 91% conservative -- identical to Strom Thurmond's rating!

My reaction to this is similar to the one toward's the Governator's greenness, which I quote from the previous blog entry:

Morris speaks of this in terms of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. But what difference does it make (assuming this worked and had the desired effect) if we replace the threat to our freedom posed by terrorism with that posed by even heavier government involvement in the energy sector of our economy than we have already?

I don't remember who (I suspect either Mike or Myrhaf, who both had good comments about the SOTU address.) said this, but becoming the Democrat Party is not how the Republicans will keep winning, nor will it be good for our country.

Our use of less oil as somehow making us more secure is a blatantly false premise. The bottom line is that even if we could stop using oil tomorrow and the rest of the world followed suit and this somehow convinced the mullahs to leave us alone, our "national security" still would be rendered moot. Our own government will have, by that time, become the worst enemy of our freedom! How "secure" is that?

Forget for the moment that what we should be doing, seizing the oil fields nationalized decades ago in the Middle East (and also making them more secure) is our right as a nation. The idea that continuing to use oil will cause the bulk of energy dollars to flow to that part of the world (or even that that part of the world will remain the most important source of oil) indefinitely is economically false. Consider Wretchard's analysis of Venezuela's reliance on oil to fund socialism, which is relevant here. As currently recoverable reserves deplete and demand increases, prices will increase, making currently uneconomical reserves economically viable, driving their development.

One of the biggest factors used in calculating the quantity of world oil reserves is price. By changing price levels the world map of oil reserves changes drastically. For example, according to Wikipedia, "Canada's proven oil reserves have been raised from around 5 billion barrels to the much larger figure of around 180 billion barrels to include tar sands, because these deposits are now considered recoverable", and the effect is dramatic. At one price level North America has little more than half the reserves of Central and South America. At a higher price level it has double the amount available in Central and South America.

Memo to George Bush: North America is nowhere near the Middle East. If anything, Bush should be promoting heavier use of oil.

Bush should end his addiction, cold turkey, to socialism as a solution to our economic and military problems. Our economy improves with less government control and the problems in the Middle East are what a military is for. Less government will help the former category of problems and more the latter. Rather than put Iran on notice last night, Bush instead has put the American people on notice that he is going to wage war on our economy instead.

Alternative fuels as an alternative means of "national security"? If Iran weren't about to have the bomb, this would be uproariously funny. If the nostrums of socialism won't solve the economic problems they were intended for, why the hell is our commander in chief advocating them for our military ones?

-- CAV