tossed into the pond from Liberal Street Fighter
Stupid at Altercation points out that we’re our own worse enemy today:
Hey Eric, it’s Stupid to get serious about the war against terrorism. I’m sorry to keep picking on Thomas Friedman, because I really do respect him, but I can’t help it. After 9/11 he repeatedly urged Dubya to use the tragedy to galvanize the nation around energy conservation. I expected Friedman and others to do the same after the London attacks, but I haven’t seen a word. It mocks the noble stoicism of the Brits to ignore the most empowering course of action we can still take in this war. One ounce of Saudi Arabian crackdown on the terrorists is worth a pound of video surveillance cameras trying to spot the next subway bomber, but what leverage do we have with the Saudis when we’re begging them to keep their oil production at maximum levels? Not to mention whatever oil money reaches the terrorists and Wahhabi institutions that create them. How can anyone call this a war when we’re financing our enemy? Zeesh, even before we entered World War II, we tried to undermine the economy of the Axis powers.
He links to a piece by Robert F Kennedy Jr who points out once again that much of our current mess could have been avoided, especially if Reagan hadn’t ended President Carter’s CAFE standards:
In the late 1970’s, President Jimmy Carter implemented CAFE standards to combat an oil shortage driven by policies of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The standards raised fuel efficiency in American cars by 7.6 miles a gallon over six years, causing oil imports from the Persian Gulf to fall by 87 percent. Our economy grew by 27 percent during that period. Detroit, predictably, figured out how to build more fuel-efficient cars largely without reductions in size, comfort or power.
The CAFE standards worked so well that they produced an oil glut by 1986. That’s when the Reagan administration intervened to rescue America’s domestic oil industry from gasoline price collapse. Ronald Reagan’s rollback of CAFE standards caused America, in that year, to double oil imports from the Persian Gulf nations and to burn more oil than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Would they have made that big of a difference if they’d continued? Kennedy continues:
According to a recent report by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985. Had we continued this wise course, we might not have had to fight the Persian Gulf war, and we would have insulated ourselves from price shocks in the international oil market. Fuel efficiency is a sound national energy policy, economic policy and foreign policy all wrapped into one. Every increase of one mile per gallon in auto fuel efficiency yields more oil than is in two Arctic National Wildlife Refuges. An improvement right now of 2.7 miles per gallon would eliminate our need for all Persian Gulf oil!
Yet the Republican Congress in 1995 made it illegal for the Environmental Protection Agency even to study higher CAFE standards. The result is that America now has the worst energy efficiency in 20 years.
What do we call a party that places the selfish interests of its corporate patrons before the wealth, health and security of their country? Profiteers? Pirates? TRAITORS? And what of the bought-and-sold Quislings who help them from the “opposing” party, the party that did everything it could to undermine Carter’s Presidency, especially during the 1980 primary campaign?
Once again, it’s necessary to face all of the ways in which the Vichy Dems in Congress and the entrenched consultancy complex continue to fail to oppose the criminals in charge, fail to take advantage of ready-made issues that Americans would rally around, if only given the opportunity. Yes, Americans love their cars, but the long waiting lists of people looking for hybrid and high-mileage cars reveals that a sizable number of our fellow citizens would be willing to do what it would take to make this country a better global citizen.
All the party has to do is rise to the challenge.
