This is an essay about making connections.
We are addicted to oil.
Even President Bush has said so (though he keeps making noises to his friends in the oil business and Saudi Arabia that he really didn’t mean it). And it’s not just oil, but also coal. We keep burning up our stocks of fossil fuels, pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As the prices for these poisonous commodities keeps rising so do our temperatures. Without question, the last few decades have been the warmest on record. Yet we continue to rely on these same energy sources that are putting the future of our life on this planet at risk.
Yet our politicians, literally, do nothing. We have no national plan to find and develop renewable sources of energy, nor does our government support efforts to create energy technologies which do not rely on the burning of coal and oil.
(cont.)
War is the result of our addiction.
We rely on oil from other countries to keep our economy running. In particular, we are dependent on oil from the Middle East, a region awash in religious persecution, ethnic and tribal animosities, sectarian violence and some of the most brutal, antidemocratic and authoritarian governments currently in existence. A region beset by wars, revolutions and the rumors of same for most of the 20th century. A place where genocide and “ethnic cleansing” are always very real possibilities. In a word, one of the most unstable and violent regions on Earth.
We have fought three wars in the last 15 years in the region, and currently have troops occupying both Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention bases in a number of other countries over there (among them Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, and Dubai). We also provide funding to Israel’s military, our principle ally in the region, and the greatest source of Arab resentment because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are there, despite the hatred and fanaticism among the local population that the presence of our military and our support for Israel generates, because the Middle East is a vital interest of the United States. Or to be more specific, the billions of barrels of oil there are of vital interest to the United States (and to the multinational oil companies).
The same oil we are addicted to using. The same oil which is polluting our planet, raising temperatures at an alarming rate, and increasing the risk of hurricanes, violent storms, floods, droughts and desertification worldwide. The same oil whose use threatens our access to fresh, drinkable water. The same oil that is helping to spread disease.
Why are we doing this?
Why is our country spending the lives of our soldiers and billions of dollars to wage aggressive war in Iraq, killing thousands of Iraqis in the bargain? Why are we so intent on raising the level of resentment toward our nation among Muslims worldwide, providing an ever increasing source of ready recruits for Islamic terrorists organizations? Why do we seemingly care so little about the future of our children and grandchildren, when our continued addiction to oil risks a mass extinction of life, only the second “Great Dying” in over 250 million years?
The answer is greed.
For much of the 20th century, and now at the beginning of the 21st, oil has been the driving source of our Nation’s foreign policy: both our access to oil, and the profits generated from it. We have overthrown democratically elected governments (e.g., the 1953 coup sponsored by the CIA which deposed Mossadegh and installed the Shah in Iran), and propped up brutal dictatorships (Saudi Arabia, Nigeria) in order to protect the interests of American oil companies. Our government recently supported an aborted attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and we are presently threatening to effect “regime change” in Iran, another oil rich nation.
As we have exhausted the oil we can remove from underneath our own soil, we have become ever more belligerent in defending our access to the oil under the soil of other countries. We invaded Iraq, and risked the breakdown of our Army and Marine Corps, not to stop some fictitious threat of “mushroom clouds” and “missile attacks”, nor to curb state sponsored terrorism, nor to spread democracy. We did so in pursuit of a fool’s errand; the belief that we could acquire Iraq’s oil for our own benefit (by which I mean the benefit of American oil interests). This was nowhere more apparent than the deliberate, and mostly unpublicized, effort by the State Department and certain American Oil companies to acquire the rights to develop Iraq’s oil.
It is these “oil interests” which now have the primary influence on American foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East. Look at the amount that these companies have contributed to Republican politicians, including President Bush, over the last few years and you will be struck by the sheer amount of money that has been funneled to the Republican Party by Big Oil: $143 million since 1990. Of course, they haven’t ignored the Democrats entirely, with just over $47 million in contributions. It’s always best to keep every base covered, after all.
Then combine that with the fact that so many officials in the Bush administration have ties to the oil industry and related companies, from Vice President Cheney’s continuing ties to Halliburton to the former President Bush’s interest in the Carlyle Group. Not to mention the “close, personal relationships” between the Saudi ruling family and the Bushes, which were never more in evidence than when pictures of our President strolling and holding hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah were broadcast to the world in April, 2005.
How does all this connect back to global warming?
That’s easy. Who has been the biggest denier that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels (always claiming more studies are needed)? The Bush administration. Who prevented the United States from signing the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming? Republican Senators. Who put the clamps on Government scientists discussing their views on climate change, and censored the NOAA website from stating that the intensity last year’s hurricane season was caused in part by rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures in the tropics? The Bush administration. Who is funding the campaign to discredit Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth? Exxon Mobil and others connected to Big Oil.
A Summary.
1. Big Oil wants us to continue using its products, despite the fact (1) their use is the principle cause of global warming, and (2) they weaken our national security by making our country increasingly dependent on oil from the Middle East to meet our energy needs.
2. The oil industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to elect politicians, mostly Republicans, who will carry out its agenda. Republicans now control the Congress, and the Presidency. Indeed, many of President Bush’s top officials have long had connections to the Oil industry and to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East.
3. President Bush invaded Iraq, not because of Saddam’s fictitious weapons of mass destruction, nor for any of the other reason generally given (spreading democracy, deposing a brutal dictator, terror threat, etc.) but in large part to benefit American economic interests in the region (i.e., Big Oil).
4. The Iraq war has harmed our National Security. Prosecution of the war has wasted billions of dollars, and destroyed thousands of American and Iraqi lives. It has put an ever increasing strain on our military forces, increased the federal debt, and helped terrorist organizations gain new recruits.
5. President Bush and the Republican Congress have failed to come up with a plan to provide for our nation’s future energy needs, other than the continued use of oil. This means the likelihood of our continued military involvement in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.
6. President Bush and the Republican Party continue to deny the reality and the dangers posed by global warming. They have rejected all overtures from other nations regarding international cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
7. Big Oil is the primary source of funding for researchers, “think tanks” and advertising campaigns which claim global warming is a hoax, and which attempt to create a controversy where none exists.
A Conclusion: This is the greatest ethical issue of our time.
It’s simple really. Big Oil has corrupted our political process, and has attempted to generate a phony controversy on global warming, in order to increase its profits from oil. As a result, we have weakened our national security by making ourselves dependent on oil from foreign sources, and by refusing to invest in energy alternatives. This has led to wars to ensure our access to that oil. More soldiers and innocent civilians will die as a direct result of those policies.
Most of all, however, Big Oil, and the politicians whom it has bought, have sold our future for their short term profits. Global Warming will kill many of the species on this planet, and will cause the untold suffering of millions, possibly billions of human beings, unless we start taking steps today to bring an end to our profligate use of fossil fuels as an energy source.
Al Gore is right, when he says that Global Warming is not a political issue, but a moral issue for all of us.
Corporations, like the big oil companies, are not constructed to pursue moral aims. They have no raison d’etre other than sheer greed for greater profits. But we, as individual human beings, are not so limited. We can look beyond our selfish, personal desires to what is best for everyone in society. And the continued dependence on oil to meet our energy needs is foolish, because weakens our national security, increases the risk of wars and terrorist attacks, and will ultimately lead to the destruction of our planet. We cannot allow that to happen. No — let me revise that: We must not allow that to happen.
Let me close by quoting Mr. Gore directly:
“I do believe the way America is going to change – and the way the world will change – is not going to be mainly because politicians propose change but it will be mainly because enough people come to the conclusion that this is not a political issue, it’s a moral issue and then they demand that politicians in all parties act.”
