Thursday, October 07, 2004
Oil Slick
Thomas Friedman has written a blistering editorial on how Bush administration's energy policy supports terrorism.
The Battle of the Pump
I hope the Kerry campaign is listening.
In the 70's, after the anti-war movement, we could see more was at stake in that cultural upheaval than tie-die and free love. It was my first year of college at Simon's Rock.
Simon's Rock is an 'early' college, a mecca for creative misfits; students who were brilliant and bored, rebels and artists.
One of my friends rigged up a radio station and broadcast from his dorm room, another dreamed of an organic farm. There was a motorcycle babe, and her roomate who designed ethereal costumes for our theatre in a barn.
What was most exciting to us was the idea of energy independence.
The OPEC embargo, now known as the 'world oil shock', in October of 1973, had served as our wake-up call. A coalition of Arab countries, during the Yom Kippur war, citing many of the same resentments and discontents percolating in the Middle East today, decided to hold out on us. Oil prices instantly quadrupled.
The United States responded to the oil crisis with gas rationing. It deeply impressed me, because I'd just started to drive. You could only buy gas on even or odd days according to arcane equations involving your license plates, leap years, and how many days there were in the month. A paperback or your knitting was kept in the glove compartment. At the gas station, lines were long.
Our struggles with Iraq war have deep roots. Hard-liners in the Pentagon at that time drew the conclusion then that the U.S. needed to exert military control in Middle East, and began writing secret memorandums and building military bases.
The Thirty Year Itch
The hippies in the farmhouses of Western Massachusetts, on the other hand, were dreaming of spinning electricity from the wind and sun. They drew up plans for houses insulated by earth, with stones used as flooring, coming up with concepts like passive heating and renewable energy. All kinds of wild new ideas began to circulate in journals and magazines illustrated with pen and ink cartoons.
When best and brightest minds of my generation looked into the future, sustainability was the magic word, the alpha and omega of lasting peace, the key to our cities.
It was clear to us, then, that the supply of oil was finite, and could easily be dominated by the most powerful nations.
The End of Oil
What breaks my heart, sometimes, is that, thirty years and several wars later, after untold violence, blood spilled, tundra swans suffocated in oil slicks, after suicide bombers, be-headings and car bombings, later, we are just starting to get it.
If we'd put that $119 billion into alternative energy, on the day after 9/11, how much different the world would be. If we'd put it into alternative energy, in 1973, there might not have been any 9/11.
Energy from the sun and wind. Cars that drive on leftover oil from McDonald's french fries.
Multiply the cost of the Iraq war by thirty years and tell me I'm a dreamer.
After Baghdad was bombed, there was a Bill Moyers special on the Kyoto Treaty. He was talking to a circle of women from India and Africa, in various flowing tribal garments. A poignant moment for me was when one took the microphone, looked into the camera and begged us, the First World, to develop alternative energy. They didn't have the resources to do it, she said. They could barely feed people. But she saw their governments heading down our path, whose environmental policies and economic consequences have reaped such terrible harvest.
Every village in the world could have it's own wind generator. Every house could have a solar panel.
Imagine.
The Battle of the Pump
I hope the Kerry campaign is listening.
In the 70's, after the anti-war movement, we could see more was at stake in that cultural upheaval than tie-die and free love. It was my first year of college at Simon's Rock.
Simon's Rock is an 'early' college, a mecca for creative misfits; students who were brilliant and bored, rebels and artists.
One of my friends rigged up a radio station and broadcast from his dorm room, another dreamed of an organic farm. There was a motorcycle babe, and her roomate who designed ethereal costumes for our theatre in a barn.
What was most exciting to us was the idea of energy independence.
The OPEC embargo, now known as the 'world oil shock', in October of 1973, had served as our wake-up call. A coalition of Arab countries, during the Yom Kippur war, citing many of the same resentments and discontents percolating in the Middle East today, decided to hold out on us. Oil prices instantly quadrupled.
The United States responded to the oil crisis with gas rationing. It deeply impressed me, because I'd just started to drive. You could only buy gas on even or odd days according to arcane equations involving your license plates, leap years, and how many days there were in the month. A paperback or your knitting was kept in the glove compartment. At the gas station, lines were long.
Our struggles with Iraq war have deep roots. Hard-liners in the Pentagon at that time drew the conclusion then that the U.S. needed to exert military control in Middle East, and began writing secret memorandums and building military bases.
The Thirty Year Itch
The hippies in the farmhouses of Western Massachusetts, on the other hand, were dreaming of spinning electricity from the wind and sun. They drew up plans for houses insulated by earth, with stones used as flooring, coming up with concepts like passive heating and renewable energy. All kinds of wild new ideas began to circulate in journals and magazines illustrated with pen and ink cartoons.
When best and brightest minds of my generation looked into the future, sustainability was the magic word, the alpha and omega of lasting peace, the key to our cities.
It was clear to us, then, that the supply of oil was finite, and could easily be dominated by the most powerful nations.
The End of Oil
What breaks my heart, sometimes, is that, thirty years and several wars later, after untold violence, blood spilled, tundra swans suffocated in oil slicks, after suicide bombers, be-headings and car bombings, later, we are just starting to get it.
If we'd put that $119 billion into alternative energy, on the day after 9/11, how much different the world would be. If we'd put it into alternative energy, in 1973, there might not have been any 9/11.
Energy from the sun and wind. Cars that drive on leftover oil from McDonald's french fries.
Multiply the cost of the Iraq war by thirty years and tell me I'm a dreamer.
After Baghdad was bombed, there was a Bill Moyers special on the Kyoto Treaty. He was talking to a circle of women from India and Africa, in various flowing tribal garments. A poignant moment for me was when one took the microphone, looked into the camera and begged us, the First World, to develop alternative energy. They didn't have the resources to do it, she said. They could barely feed people. But she saw their governments heading down our path, whose environmental policies and economic consequences have reaped such terrible harvest.
Every village in the world could have it's own wind generator. Every house could have a solar panel.
Imagine.
