Case for Moving
Away from Fossil Fuels Remains Clear
By Jim DiPeso, REP vice
president for policy and communications, published December 13, 2009,
in
the Herald, Everett,
WA
The
climate change denial crowd has been crowing that e-mails stolen from a
British university validate their line that scientists perpetrated a
fraud on the public.
“Climate-gate” reeks of a smear that was timed to blow up climate
treaty negotiations under way in Denmark. Let’s say, however, for the
sake of argument that the climate change denialists are right.
Let’s stipulate that since 1896, when the greenhouse effect was first
described mathematically, a multi-generational cabal of scientists
greedy for research grants has masterminded a plot to convince the
world that carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels is changing
the climate.
The fiends have been unmasked at last. Woo-hoo. Now, we can carry on
with carefree consumption of fossil fuels, right?
Wrong. There are good reasons to lower our dependence on hydrocarbons,
especially oil, even if all of the vetted research documenting links
between fossil fuel consumption and climate change were a mirage in the
desert.
Speaking of deserts, we now turn to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest
gas station and a medieval dictatorship that is a cash machine for
terrorist bombers.
Saudi Arabia has seized on the stolen e-mails to declare that there is
no link between human activities and climate change.
No surprise there. The House of Saud has long opposed limits on carbon
dioxide emissions. The regime’s agenda is keeping us hooked on oil and
avoiding uppity notions about energy diversification.
That may serve Saudi Arabia’s long-term interests, but it doesn’t serve
ours.
If the Saudi regime and its new best friends among the climate change
denial community get their way, climate legislating and treaty-making
will come to nothing and we will be free to guzzle merrily away.
Which, according to the global energy outlook published by the
International Energy Agency last month, would mean the following:
worldwide oil demand would grow from 85 million barrels per day in 2008
to 105 million barrels daily by 2030.
That could only mean more dependence on Saudi Arabia and other members
of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel,
where the world’s largest remaining reserves of conventional oil lie.
According to the International Energy Agency, most of the increased oil
production needed to meet business-as-usual demand would come from
OPEC’s Middle East members and from Russia, increasing those countries’
power to manipulate the oil market, at our expense.
We ignore the unforgiving math of oil dependence at our peril. America
uses some 25 percent of global oil production. We hold less than 3
percent of the world’s conventional oil reserves. OPEC members around
the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, land of secret
A-bomb factories, hold 60 percent.
We could drill, baby, drill until we drop, but we would still be
playing a game in which the Saudis and other petro-dictators hold the
high cards.
As for unconventional fuels like oil shale or coal-based liquids,
they’re unconventional for a reason. Many cost and technical barriers
must be resolved before those fuels could take a significant bite out
of conventional oil consumption.
If we push forward with an energy policy that perpetuates oil
dependence, the U.S. would be more vulnerable to OPEC’s manipulators
than ever. Our high demand would put upward pressure on oil prices,
enriching malefactors that spread violent extremism and seek the spread
of nuclear weapons in the world’s most unstable region.
The cartel’s potentates can do the math, even if their enablers in this
country can’t.
Unfortunately, climate change denialists seem only too happy to play
patsy to the oil pushers so the cartel can keep us happily hooked on
the sauce — as complacent and vulnerable as we want to be.
And if we let them get away with it, that would be the real scandal.
