[R-G] Robert Bryce on "Energy Independence"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/books/chapters/first-chapter-gusher-of-lies.html?pagewanted=print>
March 7, 2008
First Chapter
'Gusher of Lies'
By ROBERT BRYCE

The Persistent Delusion

Americans love independence.

Whether it's financial independence, political independence, the
Declaration of Independence, or grilling hotdogs on Independence Day,
America's self-image is inextricably bound to the concepts of freedom
and autonomy. The promises laid out by the Declaration — life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — are the shared faith and
birthright of all Americans.

Alas, the Founding Fathers didn't write much about gasoline.

Nevertheless, over the past 30 years or so — and particularly over the
past 3 or 4 years — American politicians have been talking as though
Thomas Jefferson himself warned about the dangers of imported crude
oil. Every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has extolled the need
for energy independence. In 1974, Nixon promised it could be achieved
within 6 years. In 1975, Gerald Ford promised it in 10. In 1977, Jimmy
Carter warned Americans that the world's supply of oil would begin
running out within a decade or so and that the energy crisis that was
then facing America was "the moral equivalent of war."

The phrase "energy independence" has become a prized bit of
meaningful-sounding rhetoric that can be tossed out by candidates and
political operatives eager to appeal to the broadest cross section of
voters. When the U.S. achieves energy independence, goes the
reasoning, America will be a self-sufficient Valhalla, with lots of
good-paying manufacturing jobs that will come from producing new
energy technologies. Farmers will grow fat, rich, and happy by growing
acre upon acre of corn and other plants that can be turned into
billions of gallons of oil-replacing ethanol. When America arrives at
the promised land of milk, honey, and supercheap motor fuel, then U.S.
soldiers will never again need visit the Persian Gulf, except,
perhaps, on vacation.

With energy independence, America can finally dictate terms to those
rascally Arab sheikhs from troublesome countries, with their
burkawearing wives and dubious social values. Energy independence will
mean a thriving economy, a positive balance of trade, and a stronger,
better America.

The appeal of this vision of energy autarky has grown dramatically
since the terrorist attacks of September 11. That can be seen through
an analysis of news stories that contain the phrase "energy
independence." In 2000, the Factiva news database had just 449 stories
containing that phrase. In 2001, there were 1,118 stories. By 2006,
that number had soared to 8,069.

The surging interest in energy independence can be explained, at least
in part, by the fact that in the post–September 11 world, many
Americans have been hypnotized by the conflation of two issues: oil
and terrorism. America was attacked, goes this line of reasoning,
because it has too high a profile in the parts of the world where oil
and Islamic extremism are abundant. And buying oil from the countries
of the Persian Gulf stuffs petrodollars straight into the pockets of
terrorists like Mohammad Atta and the 18 other hijackers who committed
mass murder on September 11.

Americans have, it appears, swallowed the notion that all foreign oil
— and thus, presumably, all foreign energy — is bad. Foreign energy is
a danger to the economy, a danger to America's national security, a
major source of funding for terrorism, and, well, just not very
patriotic.

Given these many assumptions, the common wisdom is to seek the balm of
energy independence. And that balm is being peddled by the Right, the
Left, the Greens, Big Agriculture, Big Labor, Republicans, Democrats,
senators, members of the House, George W. Bush, the opinion page of
the New York Times, and the neoconservatives.

About the only faction that dismisses the concept is Big Oil. But then
few people are listening to Big Oil these days.

Environmental groups like Greenpeace and Worldwatch Institute
continually tout energy independence. The idea has long been a main
talking point of Amory Lovins, the high priest of the
energy-efficiency movement and the CEO of the Rocky Mountain
Institute. One group, the Apollo Alliance, which represents labor
unions, environmentalists, and other left-leaning groups, says that
one of its primary goals is "to achieve sustainable American energy
independence within a decade."

Al Gore's 2006 documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient
Truth, implies that America's dependence on foreign oil is a factor in
global warming. The film, which won two Academy Awards (for best
documentary feature and best original song) contends that foreign oil
should be replaced with domestically produced ethanol and that this
replacement will reduce greenhouse gases. (In October 2007, Gore was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.)

The leading Democratic candidates for the White House in 2008 have
made energy independence a prominent element of their stump speeches.
Illinois senator Barack Obama has declared that "now is the time for
serious leadership to get us started down the path of energy
independence." In January 2007, in the video that she posted on her
Web site that kicked off her presidential campaign,New York senator
Hillary Clinton said she wants to make America "energy independent and
free of foreign oil." Former North Carolina senator John Edwards
believes the U.S. needs "energy independence from unstable and hostile
areas of the world."

The Republicans are on board, too. In January 2007, shortly before
Bush's State of the Union speech, one White House adviser declared
that the president would soon deliver "headlines above the fold that
will knock your socks off in terms of our commitment to energy
independence." In February 2007, Arizona senator and presidential
candidate John McCain told voters in Iowa, "We need energy
independence. We need it for a whole variety of reasons." In March
2007, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani insisted that the federal
government "must treat energy independence as a matter of national
security." He went on, saying that "we've been talking about energy
independence for over 30 years and it's been, well, really, too much
talk and virtually no action. . . . I'm impatient and I'm
single-minded about my goals, and we will achieve energy
independence."

On April 26, 2007, another Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, the
former governor of Massachusetts, used the Jerusalem Post's e-mail
list to conflate the issues of oil, terrorism, Israel, and energy
independence in a fund-raising appeal for his presidential campaign.
The e-mail message, which showed a large picture of Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked several questions, including "Do you
believe that those who support terrorism against America and against
the state of Israel should be held accountable?" The next question:
"Do you agree that we must become energy independent and stop sending
$1 billion a day to nations like Iran and Syria who use that money
against us?" (Syria exports modest amounts of crude oil.)

The Democratic Party, which won control of the House and Senate in the
November 2006 elections, has made energy independence into a key
talking point. About the time of the elections, Nancy Pelosi, the
congresswoman from San Francisco who became Speaker of the House,
issued the Democrats' "New Direction" agenda. The third point on that
list — right after raising the minimum wage and repealing certain tax
incentives — is "invest in research and development to promote energy
independence." It says the Democrats will achieve energy independence
"within ten years. We should be sending our energy dollars to the
Midwest, not the Middle East. America's farmers will fuel America's
energy independence."

A Democratic think tank, the Center for American Progress, which was
created by a group of politicos from the Clinton administration, has
launched a campaign called "Kick the Oil Habit," an effort that seems
to imply America can quit using oil with the same ease that a smoker
might give up cigarettes. In May 2006, the group's lead spokesman,
actor Robert Redford, appeared on TV talk shows and wrote opinion
pieces in which he said the U.S. should quit using oil altogether so
that it can get away from "dictators and despots." The solutions
proposed by Redford and the Democrats: more ethanol, biofuels, and
hybrid vehicles. During an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live,
Redford said that he supported corn ethanol production because "it's
cheaper. It's cleaner. It's renewable. And you know what? It's
American because we grow it."

In January 2007,Andy Grove, the former chairman of giant computer-chip
maker Intel Corp., penned an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal
in which he decried the lack of progress toward energy independence:
"Even though the importance of the energy independence issue has been
recognized and emphasized by every president since 1974, our vital
national objective is vanishing like a mirage in the distance." Grove
went on to claim that our use of foreign energy "gives great power to
other nations over our destiny."

In September 2007, S. David Freeman, a longtime advocate of renewable
energy who once chaired the Tennessee Valley Authority and has headed
several other electric utilities, released a book called Winning Our
Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How. Freeman's book calls
for a multidecade effort to close America's older coal and nuclear
power plants while focusing on more efficient plug-in hybrid cars. A
press release publicizing the book says that "Freeman charges that the
reason we aren't already using more renewable energy is that the oil
companies and electrical utilities have waged a slick campaign to
deceive Americans."

In late October 2007, a book with a similar theme — Freedom from Oil:
How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction — rose
to number 8 on the Washington Post's bestseller list. The book, by
David Sandalow, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a
former official in the Clinton administration, touts the potential of
plug-in hybrid cars, biofuels, and fuel efficiency to cut America's
oil consumption. The front cover of the book has a blurb from Al Gore
which says that when Sandalow "writes about energy and the
environment, we should all pay close attention."

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans are worried
about foreign oil. A March 2007 survey by Yale University's Center for
Environmental Law and Policy found that 93 percent of respondents said
imported oil is a serious problem and 70 percent said it was "very"
serious. That finding was confirmed by an April 2007 poll by Zogby
International, which found that 74 percent of Americans believe that
cutting oil imports should be a high priority for the federal
government. And a majority of those surveyed said that they support
expanding the domestic production of alternative fuels.

The energy independence rhetoric has become so extreme that some
politicians are even claiming that lightbulbs will help achieve the
goal. In early 2007,U.S. Representative Jane Harman, a California
Democrat, introduced a bill that would essentially outlaw incandescent
bulbs by requiring all bulbs in the U.S. to be as efficient as compact
fluorescent bulbs. Writing about her proposal in the Huffington Post,
Harman declared that such bulbs could "help transform America into an
energy efficient and energy independent nation."

While Harman may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, there's
no question that the concept of energy independence resonates with
American voters and explains why a large percentage of the American
populace believes that energy independence is not only doable but
desirable.

But here's the problem, and the reason for this book: It's not and it isn't.

Energy independence is hogwash. From nearly any standpoint — economic,
military, political, or environmental — energy independence makes no
sense. Worse yet, the inane obsession with the idea of energy
independence is preventing the U.S. from having an honest and
effective discussion about the energy challenges it now faces.

This book focuses on the need to acknowledge, and deal with, the
difference between rhetoric and reality. The reality is that the world
— and the energy business in particular — is becoming ever more
interdependent. And this interdependence will likely only accelerate
in the years to come as new supplies of fossil fuel become more
difficult to find and more expensive to produce. While alternative and
renewable forms of energy will make minor contributions to America's
overall energy mix, they cannot provide enough new supplies to
supplant the new global energy paradigm, one in which every type of
fossil fuel — crude oil, natural gas, diesel fuel, gasoline, coal, and
uranium — gets traded and shipped in an ever more sophisticated global
market.

Regardless of the ongoing fears about oil shortages, global warming,
conflict in the Persian Gulf, and terrorism, the plain, unavoidable
truth is that the U.S., along with nearly every other country on the
planet is married to fossil fuels. And that fact will not change in
the foreseeable future, meaning the next 30 to 50 years. That means
that the U.S. and the other countries of the world will continue to
need oil and gas from the Persian Gulf and other regions. Given those
facts, the U.S. needs to accept the reality of energy interdependence.

The integration and interdependence of the global energy market can be
seen by looking at Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer on the
planet. In 2005, the Saudis imported 83,000 barrels of gasoline and
other refined oil products per day. It can also be seen by looking at

Iran, which imports 40 percent of its gasoline needs. Iran also
imports large quantities of natural gas from Turkmenistan. If the
Saudis, with their 260 billion barrels of oil reserves, and the
Iranians, with their 132 billion barrels of oil and 970 trillion cubic
feet of natural gas reserves, can't be energy-independent, why should
the U.S. even try?

An October 2006 report by the Council on Foreign Relations put it
succinctly: "The voices that espouse 'energy independence' are doing
the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable
over the foreseeable future and that encourages the adoption of
inefficient and counterproductive policies."

America's future when it comes to energy — as well its future in
politics, trade, and the environment — lies in accepting the reality
of an increasingly interdependent world. Obtaining the energy that the
U.S. will need in future decades requires American politicians,
diplomats, and businesspeople to be actively engaged with the
energy-producing countries of the world, particularly the Arab and
Islamic producers. Obtaining the country's future energy supplies
means that the U.S. must embrace the global market while also
acknowledging the practical limits on the ability of wind power and
solar power to displace large amounts of the electricity that's now
generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors. The rhetoric about the
need for energy independence continues largely because the American
public is woefully ignorant about the fundamentals of energy and the
energy business. It appears that voters respond to the phrase, in
part, because it has become a type of code that stands for foreign
policy isolationism — the idea being that if only the U.S. didn't buy
oil from the Arab and Islamic countries, then all would be better. The
rhetoric of energy independence provides political cover for
protectionist trade policies, which have inevitably led to ever larger
subsidies for politically connected domestic energy producers, the
corn ethanol industry being the most obvious example.

But going it alone with regard to energy will not provide energy
security or any other type of security. Energy independence, at its
root, means protectionism and isolationism, both of which are in
direct opposition to America's long-term interests in the Persian Gulf
and globally.

Once you move past the hype and the overblown rhetoric, there's little
or no justification for the push to make America energy-independent.
And that's the purpose of this book: to debunk the concept of energy
independence and show that none of the alternative or renewable energy
sources now being hyped — corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, wind
power, solar power, coal-to-liquids, and so on — will free America
from imported fuels. America's appetite is simply too large and the
global market is too sophisticated and too integrated for the U.S. to
simply secede.

Indeed, America is getting much of the energy it needs because it can
rely on the strength of an ever-more-resilient global energy market.
In 2005, the U.S. bought crude oil from 41 different countries, jet
fuel from 26 countries, and gasoline from 46. In 2006, it imported
coal from 11 different countries and natural gas from 6 others.
American consumers in some border states rely on electricity imported
from Mexico and Canada. Tens of millions of Americans get electricity
from nuclear power reactors that are fueled by foreign uranium. In
2006, the U.S. imported the radioactive element from 8 different
countries.

Yes, America does import a lot of energy. But here's an undeniable
truth: It's going to continue doing so for decades to come. Iowa
farmers can turn all of their corn into ethanol, Texas and the Dakotas
can cover themselves in windmills, and Montana can try to convert all
of its coal into motor fuel, but none of those efforts will be enough.
America needs energy, and lots of it. And the only way to get that
energy is by relying on the vibrant global trade in energy commodities
so that each player in that market can provide the goods and services
that it is best capable of producing.