Energy Policy as *the* Democratic Issue
Mon Mar 07, 2005 at 05:53:12 PM PDT
Jim Kunstler has the following to say about the recent uptick in oil prices:
On Sunday, the New York Times ran a roundtable discussion (in the Book Review) between three prominent young "liberal" intellectuals (Katrina vanden Heuvel, Michael Tomasky, and Peter Beinhart) about what the Democratic Left can do to reclaim its place as a credible opposition. None of these hotshots mentioned the fact that the nation faces a defining crisis over our energy supplies. I don't think the word "oil" was even mentioned by this clueless trio. They have no idea what kind of convulsion we are heading into.
Somebody ought to bring this to the Democrat's attention. America has a problem bigger than social security, or the price of prescription drugs, or gay marriage. America is heading into a situation in which it will no longer have an economy. The Republicans at least have an excuse for their willful blindness -- they've already taken the position that the life of extreme car-dependency and everything it implies is not negotiable. They are committed to defending that position, no matter how foolish it may be.
The Democrats need to get on the ball about this. Oil prices have been skewing back and forth between $40 and $55 for eight months now. The fundamental reason why this is happening is
geology and physics, and has only a tangential relationship to current events. Oil is a limited resource. The US is nearly out: we only have 3 years or so of oil in the US. Alaska is a non-starter. The North Sea reserves are in terminal decline. Everywhere, oil is fading. And as oil goes, so goes our civilization.
At this point, no force on earth can or will return oil prices down to below $40 ever again. Prices will rise and rise and rise: up three clicks, back two, up three more, etc. The process is already starting. Supplies are dwindling, and we will soon have nothing to power our economy. The oil age is over, and we have nothing at present to take its place. Remember the Arab oil embargoes of the 70s? Think of that. Endlessly, getting worse every week. With no other swing producers of oil, imagine what America will look like.
Social Security is a non-starter. Privatize it or don't privatize it: it won't matter. It will not exist in 30 years because all the Social Security math depends on an economy that expands at around 2% a year. More likely, our economy is going to contract at a much higher rate than that. So by all means fight privatization, but the Democratic party's highest priority must be energy policy.
Gay marriage? By all means fight for it, but even gay people won't care about it once the oil crisis begins in earnest. Getting married will be the least of anyone's concerns when the economy is in a permanent recession with food, water, gasoline, electronics, and everything else uncontrollably spiraling upward in price.
Forget 9/11 and terrorism also. No one will care about these things, except to the degree that terrorism will probably be an attendent event to a meltdown of American society. And don't forget that the terrorism issue was proximately caused by the oil issue, at least in Osama's case.
The Democrats cannot afford to be the sniveling whiners many of them have been recently. The Democrats cannot just have a one-point position on the topic, for example thinking that if we raise CAFE standards on SUVs then this problem will magically go away. This nation needs real leadership long-term, because unlike most other Bush disasters, this is something we won't be able to clean up in a decade. The recent spikes in oil prices are just the initial storm surge of a wave that threatens to drown us in famine and war. It may already be too late to stop it.
NASCAR nation will probably not like the idea of becoming less car-dependent, so we need to come up with a frame for the issue. I'd suggest framing the oil issue as a security issue (America is dependent on IRAN for our economic security! How can this be?). We need a serious push for renewable energy, and we need to examine our urban planning and make sensible policy decisions. But most of all, we need to provide real leadership. The Democratic renewal in America is about to go through a baptism by fire, and the decisions we make now will affect the lives of millions for hundreds of years to come.
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