Drill Baby Ooops!

We are 5% of the world’s population and we consume 24% of the world’s energy.  All of the oil under the Gulf of Mexico will only supply 4% of our energy needs.  In order to keep that fuel flowing, we now have a major disaster but we think of ourselves as innocent in the matter.  Instead, we are blaming everyone in our line of site. But not us.

We are complicit. On average, each American consumes as much energy as 2 Japanese, 6 Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians, 370 Ethiopians.  It’s a kind of Ponzi scheme that takes from others in order to sustain our voracious appetite.  You remember Bernie Madoff, the Ponzi artist.  He gave unusually high returns to the earlier investors by using money from later investors.  As unethical as that was, it didn’t destroy the environment. 

Our greedy demand for the earth’s fossil fuels is just like a Ponzi scheme.  But now, we’re destroying our natural resources to get it.  Ultimately, like in Madoff’s case, we’ll reach a point where the rest of the world demands more and the scheme collapses.    

I’ve sailed the Gulf of Mexico many times.  Fifty to 100 miles offshore it rivals any of the world’s major oceans in beauty and sea life.  It’s alive with porpoise’s that frolic in the wake of boats, and elusive sea turtles that dive before you can get a second look.  At night, you can see schools of fluorescent fish stream by as you move along your course.  We don’t know what the effects of “our disaster” will be, but the Gulf will not be the same in our lifetimes.

So if we are inflicting terrible damage on our own ecology for 4% of our oil supply, what are we doing for the other 96%?  Among other things, we are financing Mideastern theocracies who fund terrorism.  These governments create conditions that foment terrorist ideologies. We are complicit in this matter and therefore in creating our own insecurity by buying their oil.  While we remain addicted to fossil fuels, we’ve lost thousands of lives and just reached spending 1 trillion dollars on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our inherent believe in “infinite growth” on a finite planet is wrong.  In other words, we cannot continue on this course.  Guess who knows this best?  The Chinese.  The Chinese have a national energy policy that looks forward to “green energy”. Ours looks backwards to fossil fuels.  Their goal is to become the “green energy” technology and manufacturing center of the world.  We, on the other hand, are resolved to make every energy issue into a partisan conflict.  The impact is, that we remain deadlocked and addicted to existing energy sources.

We are plagued with a common misconception; that because each of us have the right to own our opinion, that all opinions are of equal value.  They are not.  (Sorry Mrs. Palin) Our government needs to create an energy policy that takes us into the 21^st century.  Further, it needs to consider only those valid opinions that serve to get us there and ignore those that are politically motivated. That’s called leadership.

If the Obama administration misses this opportunity to rally American ingenuity to cure our addiction to Mideastern oil, it will be its greatest failure.  It seems appropriate to use a Middle eastern saying here; “some people never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.  This is an opportunity to develop new energy sources, create new jobs and starve funding for global terrorism.  We missed the opportunity to keep the world on our side after 911.  I hope we don’t miss this opportunity to create new jobs and release ourselves from oil dependence.  We have the intellect and the ability.  We have the rallying point.  We need the leadership.  Will Obama seize this opportunity or will he miss it? 

Robert DeFilippis