Good Opinion piece from Friedman...9/11 & 4/11

[Jeepers]

I am reliably told by a Bush administration official that there is an old saying in Texas that goes like this: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”

Could anyone possibly come up with a better description of President Bush’s energy policy? America is in the midst of its worst energy crisis in years and what is the big decision our Decider has decided? Drum roll, please: Our Decider decided to lift the executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shoreline — even though he knew this was a meaningless gesture because a Congressional moratorium on drilling passed in 1981 remains in force.

The economist Paul Romer once said to me that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” President Bush is well on his way to being remembered as the leader who wasted not one but two crises: 9/11 and 4/11. The average price of gasoline in the U.S. last week, according to the Energy Information

After 9/11, Mr. Bush had the chance to summon the country to a great nation-building project focused on breaking our addiction to oil. Instead, he told us to go shopping. After gasoline prices hit $4.11 last week, he had the chance to summon the country to a great nation-building project focused on clean energy. Instead, he told us to go drilling.

Neither shopping nor drilling is the solution to our problems.

What doesn’t the Bush crowd get? It’s this: We don’t have a “gasoline price problem.” We have an addiction problem. We are addicted to dirty fossil fuels, and this addiction is driving a whole set of toxic trends that are harming our nation and world in many different ways. It is intensifying global warming, creating runaway global demand for oil and gas, weakening our currency by shifting huge amounts of dollars abroad to pay for oil imports, widening “energy poverty” across Africa, destroying plants and animals at record rates and fostering ever-stronger petro-dictatorships in Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

When a person is addicted to crack cocaine, his problem is not that the price of crack is going up. His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating. The cure is to break the addiction.

Ditto for us. Our cure is not cheaper gasoline, but a clean energy system. And the key to building that is to keep the price of gasoline and coal — our crack — higher, not lower, so consumers are moved to break their addiction to these dirty fuels and inventors are moved to create clean alternatives.

I understand why consumers think we have a gasoline price problem — because they are immediately hurt by higher gas prices and the pump is where most people touch our energy system. They tend not to see the bigger picture. But that is why you have a president: to explain that and lay out a response.

Alas, we have a president and a vice president who deny that climate change is hurting our environmental body, who refuse to see the connection between the dollars we are shifting abroad and the rise of petro-dictators, who do not care about biodiversity loss and who are apparently untroubled by the sharp decline in the dollar, partly because of all the money we are paying for oil imports. So, they have chosen to define this as a “gasoline price crisis” — not an-addiction-to-a-fuel-that-is-badly-hurting-us-as-a-nation crisis.

If you want to know what an alternative strategy might look like, read the speech that Al Gore delivered on Thursday to the bipartisan Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore, the alliance’s chairman, called for a 10-year plan — the same amount of time John F. Kennedy set for getting us to the moon — to shift the entire country to “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” to power our homes, factories and even transportation.

Mr. Gore proposed dramatically improving our national electricity grid and energy efficiency, while investing massively in clean solar, wind, geothermal and carbon-sequestered coal technologies that we know can work but just need to scale. To make the shift, he called for taxing carbon and offsetting that by reducing payroll taxes: Let’s “tax what we burn, not what we earn,” he said.

Whether you agree or not with Gore’s plan, at least he has a plan for dealing with the real problem we face — a multifaceted, multigenerational energy/environment/geopolitical problem.

This moment — $4.11 — represents Bush’s last chance for a legacy. It amazes me how inadequate his response has been. By hectoring the nation to simply drill for more oil, he has profoundly underestimated the challenges we face, misread the scale of the solutions required, underappreciated the American people’s willingness to sacrifice if presented with a real plan, and ignored the greatness that would accrue to our country if we led the world in clean power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/opinion/20friedman.html?hp

 

[editec]

It amazes me how inadequate his response has been.

Does it really?

If one were inclined to conspiracy theories (which I am not) one might assume that the inexplicable spike in oil prices had a more clandestine explanation than:

Once upon a time, trillions of dollars decided to enter and totally distort a basically rational oil market.

Would any of us, liberal or conservative argue against the statement:

The spike in oil is the stick serves to motivate those on-the-fence Americans to demand more drilling.

Would any of us, liberal or conservative argue against the statement:

The spike in oil prices is the stick ALSO motivating Americans to demand aternative energy investment.

Now...

If I were a multi-billionaire energy baron, I'd be quietly positioning myself to control the alternative energy industry, right now.

At the same time, I would be vociferously demanding the right to drill for more oil and mocking the alternative energy field as not ready for prime time investment.

That way I'd win coming and going, short or long term.

Ask yourself this...

Are those who were smart enough to dominate the world of high finance, government and industry ALSO have enough long term vision to also want to jump-start and own the industry which will inevitably replace this carbon based energy with sustainable energy sources?

Maybe, some of you think I give these guys too much credit and okay, maybe I do. But I do not give myself too much credit and I can see how easily this can happen. These guys are way smarter than I am.

But, isn't maintaining power and control ever so much easier when you could control the argument from both sides of the table?

Isn't it easier to divide to conquer?

The elite class has some very savy people in it, folks.

People who understand how to manipulate the media, and the public with the aid of private organizations and our goverments; people who understand how to move public sentiment and benefit from the rancor and division that happens when people are sold myths about how the OTHER HALF of the population is the root cause of whatever problems happen.

Agreed?

If so, ten follow me down this hypothetical rathole a little further, okay?

I hear some of you thinking right now: Come on, editec....it doesn't work that way. That's a (gasp!) conspiracy theory.

My response to that charge is this...

No grand overarching secret conspiracy is really necessary for this to be taking place.

I submit for you consideration that:

Some of you sense that something must be afoot when your team does things that you KNOW don't make sense given their STATED philosophies.

It doesn't take secret organziations or secret conspiring to control large populations, folks.

It just takes power applied to long term planning.

Playing both ends out of the middle is what smart leadership does.

Such is how it has always been, such is how it will always be.

The last time truly oppossing camps of elite TRULY fought over the soul of this nation was our CIVIL WAR.

Nobody in power wants that to happen, again, folks.

Those in positions of power might squabble among themselves over who gets the hammer at the moment, but their interests are essantially the same -- to keep US squabbling and supporting one of their teams or the other.

They want to maintain the status quo of our shamocratic institutions intact because they control those institutions, and they work ever so well for their interests, regardless of whether their team happens to be in power at the moment or not.

 

[Chris]

The country has woken up, and when President Obama gets elected the government will follow.

We will move toward alternative energy as soon as Bush leaves office.

 

[Angel Heart]

What is the science fairy going to come and give us alternative energy? The science has been moving along just not a fast pace. There is no shortage of oil on to of that.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

"good opinion piece" and "Friedman" should never be used in the same sentence together, just fyi.

A large percentage of the runup in the price of gasoline can be blamed squarely on the Iraq war. Not just the reduction in oil output, but also the debasement of the US dollar as a result of the war. It's worth noting that Friedman supported the Iraq war.

Hearing Friedman talk about how to make gas cheaper is like...It's like going out to dinner with friends, and the lactose intolerant friend insists on getting ice cream for desert even though the other friends remind him that it's an obviously bad idea. Then after he shits his pants on the way home, he starts lecturing you--with a straight face--about how you really ought to get one of those air fresheners to hang from your rearview mirror, because your car smells like ass.

 

[Charles_Main]

A large percentage of the runup in the price of gasoline can be blamed squarely on the Iraq war. Not just the reduction in oil output, but also the debasement of the US dollar as a result of the war. It's worth noting that Friedman supported the Iraq war.

The Run up in oil can be tied to the fall of the dollar, which is due to our debt. Iraq has added to this, but is by far not the sole cause of it. 700 Billion out of 11 trillion is less than 7% of our entire debt. so I think blaming it all on the war in Iraq is a bit simplistic.

 

[dilloduck]

Does it really?

If one were inclined to conspiracy theories (which I am not) one might assume that the inexplicable spike in oil prices had a more clandestine explanation than:

Once upon a time, trillions of dollars decided to enter and totally distort a basically rational oil market.

Would any of us, liberal or conservative argue against the statement:

The spike in oil is the stick serves to motivate those on-the-fence Americans to demand more drilling.

Would any of us, liberal or conservative argue against the statement:

The spike in oil prices is the stick ALSO motivating Americans to demand aternative energy investment.

Now...

If I were a multi-billionaire energy baron, I'd be quietly positioning myself to control the alternative energy industry, right now.

At the same time, I would be vociferously demanding the right to drill for more oil and mocking the alternative energy field as not ready for prime time investment.

That way I'd win coming and going, short or long term.

Ask yourself this...

Are those who were smart enough to dominate the world of high finance, government and industry ALSO have enough long term vision to also want to jump-start and own the industry which will inevitably replace this carbon based energy with sustainable energy sources?

Maybe, some of you think I give these guys too much credit and okay, maybe I do. But I do not give myself too much credit and I can see how easily this can happen. These guys are way smarter than I am.

But, isn't maintaining power and control ever so much easier when you could control the argument from both sides of the table?

Isn't it easier to divide to conquer?

The elite class has some very savy people in it, folks.

People who understand how to manipulate the media, and the public with the aid of private organizations and our goverments; people who understand how to move public sentiment and benefit from the rancor and division that happens when people are sold myths about how the OTHER HALF of the population is the root cause of whatever problems happen.

Agreed?

If so, ten follow me down this hypothetical rathole a little further, okay?

I hear some of you thinking right now: Come on, editec....it doesn't work that way. That's a (gasp!) conspiracy theory.

My response to that charge is this...

No grand overarching secret conspiracy is really necessary for this to be taking place.

I submit for you consideration that:

Some of you sense that something must be afoot when your team does things that you KNOW don't make sense given their STATED philosophies.

It doesn't take secret organziations or secret conspiring to control large populations, folks.

It just takes power applied to long term planning.

Playing both ends out of the middle is what smart leadership does.

Such is how it has always been, such is how it will always be.

The last time truly oppossing camps of elite TRULY fought over the soul of this nation was our CIVIL WAR.

Nobody in power wants that to happen, again, folks.

Those in positions of power might squabble among themselves over who gets the hammer at the moment, but their interests are essantially the same -- to keep US squabbling and supporting one of their teams or the other.

They want to maintain the status quo of our shamocratic institutions intact because they control those institutions, and they work ever so well for their interests, regardless of whether their team happens to be in power at the moment or not.

nice post--it's cute how they get the little people to think they are important by voting too. I'm going to rely on my ability to adapt to whatever kind of "policy" they decide to force on me--even if it isn't fair.