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Oil hits $100 a barrel
An American flag lays in a slick of oil that washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
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Kai Ryssdal: Should you have wanted to purchase a barrel of crude oil this morning at the New York Mercantile Exchange, it would have set you back $102.23. The trouble in Libya is the immediate cause.
But every time a squeeze like this happens, we start hearing about our dependence on foreign oil. A long line of presidents has bemoaned our addiction. Why haven't we been able to break the habit?
Sarah Gardner reports from the Marketplace Sustainability Desk it's because we don't really want to.
Sarah Gardner: OK, it's not exactly that we don't want to get off foreign oil. Richard Nixon certainly did. Or at least he said so in 1973 after the Arab oil embargo.
Richard Nixon: Let us set as our national goal that by the end of this decade, we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign enemy, eh, eh, foreign energy sources.
Later presidents may not have made that particular slip of the tongue, but they echoed the sentiment. Listen to George W. Bush in 2007.
George W. Bush: Tonight I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we've done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years.
Not as ambitious a goal as Nixon's, but Bush told us it would cut oil imports substantially. And imports have fallen in recent years, thanks in part to homemade biofuels. But imports still make up half of all the oil we consume. We still use lots of gasoline and we expect it cheap. That's partly why Congress would rather drink diesel fuel than raise gas taxes.
And Bob Deans at the Natural Resources Defense Council says the oil industry likes it that way.
Bob Deans: If you look at the top five largest privately-owned oil companies they made $950 billion in profits just over the past decade, and these companies take care of themselves. Here in Washington they're served by an army of lobbyists almost 800 strong.
But it's not just our expectations of cheap gas and oil industry muscle. Rice University's Amy Myers Jaffe says we've also pandered to the auto industry. Reached at an energy conference in Tokyo, Jaffe says we could have asked a lot more of carmakers.
Amy Myers Jaffe: And it's really disgraceful because other countries have had a very pro-active policy. There are better efficiency and mileage standards in China than there are here in the United States.
But our dependence on foreign oil also stems from a reluctance to produce more here at home. We've restricted our offshore drilling out of concern for the environment and rightly so, said critics, following the BP disaster. Those same critics say we've also skimped on research funding for alternatives to petroleum.
But oil expert Philip Verleger believes there's a reason for that.
Philip Verleger: The government has proven to be horrible at picking winners.
So is Nixon's goal of U.S. energy independence a mere dream? Daniel Yergin is author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power." He says energy independence has always been an elusive goal, given our lifestyle and the breadth of the American economy. Until we all start driving cars fueled by some economical alternative to oil, Yergin argues we should set more practical goals.
Daniel Yergin: Diversification of where our supplies come from, increased efficiency of automobiles and a balance between domestic production and imports.
Which we might have by 2016, when automakers have to meet new fuel efficiency standards, albeit not near as tough as Europe's or Japan's.
I'm Sarah Gardner for Marketplace.
My only quip with the interview is that you let Mr. Philip Verleger get away with a huge unqualified assertion: " The government has proven to be horrible at picking winners." Is this true? Didn't the government pick the Internet and the national highway system? And, arguably, didn't the government itself pick oil, through subsidies and tax breaks? It seems the government has picked all kinds of winners.
The solution, enough people know the solution. We need action, from all solutions. We need a healthy diverse marketplace of alternatives. The current marketplace of ideas for some "odd reason" does not match our current state of the marketplace. Clean energy from the sun, the wind? We should have had that years ago, all over America. Cars that are charged by electricity instead of toxic imported dinosaur bones? It took a bailout and financial crisis for the government to mandate industry "rethink" their electric car idea. Our entire economy, from food to fuel to transportation to our new friend plastic depends on petrol and we have the potential to be so much more. C'mon America, captilism,communism, the World, humanity, the "free hand", c'mon People we really need to do something....
Is this God's way of telling us to prepare for the not-very-far-off day when gas will cost $10 a gallon? That is when supplies run short or when supplies are plentiful but are mostly in places where it is much more expensive to drill and transport and refine from.
Yes, Mr. Stoner Middleton. Every liberal cries "alternative energy" when you ask him to conserve, even just a little bit. Alternative energy is a maybe and if so, at an indefinite point in the future. Conservation is the only already available solution to our energy crisis.
A New Economic Foundation,
Renewable Energy and the Social Contract
We have an opportunity to create a new economic foundation based on renewable natural resources, yielding thousands of green jobs, producing a sustainable replacement for oil and the restoration of social consent and confidence in the body politic. All of that and more made manifest by a stroke of the pen, simply by properly classifying hemp as the medicine and beneficial resource that over 100,000,000 Americans already know it is. Hemp, cannabis is good.
The social benefit of a rational hemp policy would be to restore social consent and confidence in the body politic. Currently, over 100,000,000 Americans have used marijuana and have decided that it is a good thing, not dangerous and should be free, not used to ruin peoples lives by arrest, confiscation and disenfranchisement. Thinking people do their own research and many times conclude that the laws against marijuana are arbitrary, unjust, wrong and that the only people who support them are either uninformed or their jobs depend upon the mandatory acceptance of marijuana prohibition. This is the true silent majority, citizens who think that the marijuana laws are irrational and are afraid of persecution and discrimination if they express their opinions publicly.
Industrial hemp production could provide a domestic and renewable source of fuel, fiber and jobs. Hemp can be grown, produced and processed all across the land by thousands of urban farmers using land, lots, parks and public lands lying fallow and unused. These green jobs are about the growing, harvesting and processing of locally grown organics for food and fuel and could constitute the bedrock of a truly independent economy, intrinsically secure, renewable and stable, sustainable and most importantly doable.
The benefits of a rational hemp policy are financial, social and moral.
The economic impact of is three fold; first is the creation of Jobs based on a sustainable, clean source of fuel, fiber and medicine, estimated at over One Trillion dollars. Good jobs that produce energy and tax revenue that can not be exported.
The second is the savings to taxpayers by eliminating the money spent on law enforcement, the courts and prisons, estimated at over 8 billion a year. The third is the cost to individuals and families who are criminalized by a system that encourages law enforcement to arrest people, fine them, confiscate their property, and disenfranchise them from the vote, healthcare, professional licenses and credit. This cost is measured in the billions of dollars. All totaled the war on marijuana and the lost opportunities to develop hemp; combined with the needless suffering of those persecuted is over 2 Trillion dollars a year.
The moral benefit is simple; the truth will set us free.
We need to decriminalize marijuana and repel the effects of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act to restore the production, development and use of the most sustainable, renewable natural resource recorded in history. Hemp production can replace the use of oil as a fuel quickly, efficiently and at low cost. Hemp is a renewable crop that can be grown on land not used for food, improving the land and providing a carbon neutral source of fuel. Hemp production and processing will create jobs all across the land while providing a local and domestic source of energy.
The use of marijuana for medical purposes is the oldest and most universally documented use of any substance in medical history. 13 states have decided that marijuana is a beneficial plant and it is time allow and encourage the use and investigation of medical marijuana and industrial hemp.
Hemp production was the economic foundation of colonial America because it was readily grown and used for over 25,000 different purposes; Hemp was grown for sails, rope, oil for lamps, clothing and high quality paper. The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper by Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of hemp for commerce, medicine and recreation. George Washington was one of the largest hemp growers in the colonies and the renewable income produced by this plant sustained our first president and his family before, during and after the revolution. It is fair to say that the spirit to be free and independent was made possible by the ability of our fore fathers to be economically independent and free. Hemp production was the backbone of liberty, freedom and economic independence for colonial America and could once again be the keystone of a renewable, sustainable and yes, Independent economy.
