(Energy Security = National Security = Economic Security = Societal Security, etc.).
If you see Darth Vader at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, you should know that something is wrong. That's because our favorite movie villain is a brainchild of George Lucas, who releases Star Wars through 20th Century Fox, not Paramount, the home of Star Trek.
Also, don't go looking for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck at Disney World. Bugs and Daffy work for Warner Brothers, not Disney!
Also don't expect coherent, rational national security and economic security plans in the Bush Administration's cartoon world. LIke Wile E. Coyote, they think they can "Catch The Security Roadrunner" by pursuing the same sort of tired, shop-worn, ineffective, and just plain wrong Republican strategies tried and found wanting in the Hoover and Reagan Administrations.
The Republicans tell us that if we only opened up unrestricted oil drilling in what remains of wild Alaska, America's increasing oil problems will be solved. Never mind that it will take eight to ten years to get full production from the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge; they also don't tell us that less than five percent of our oil needs will be covered, and then only for two decades or so. Not good enough, Mr. Bush.
The Bush Administration and its foreign policy gurus tell us a series of fantastic things worthy of a cartoon plot: Such as America needs to instigate a series of ill-conceived Middle Eastern wars into the foreseeable future. Supposedly we need additional Constitutional abominations such as Patriot Act Two. And we allegedly need this Administration's "bull in a China shop" attitude towards other countries, all of this to buy security from terrorism for America.
Never mind that the Bush Administration has made little effort to find and secure missing former Soviet nuclear materials, to keep them out of the wrong hands. They'd rather spend tens of billions in taxpayer dollars on James Bondian gadgetry than undertake the hard work of training people and putting them on the ground in Muslim societies, to provide America with an early-warning network to identify where the next Osama Bin Ladens will arise. And arise they inevitably will.
Never mind that Bush and his administration want to gut funding for local police and fire, our first responders not only to terrorist attacks but also the natural disasters we know will always occur. This administration would rather pretend they were in George Lucas' world, reviving Reagan-era fantasies of Star Wars missile defenses, though the Soviet threat evaporated nearly two decades ago. Come on, Mr. Bush what is the bigger threat? Terrorists with high tech ballistic missiles or low tech dirty bombs in suitcases? Why aren't there enough people and resources on the ground in Muslim societies to detect the most likely Islamic extremist threats?
Apparently the Bush Administration would rather pursue technical fetishes such as the so-called "Total Information Awareness" program, which will miss terrorists after they spend 15 minutes to change their habits to evade the computer sweeps. But Ashcroft would be proud! TIA would still be good for catching grandmothers at the airport who might have been peaceniks, hippies or civil rights marchers in their youth, good for violating the rights of citizens with political views the Republican Party doesn't approve of.
The Bush Administration also thinks Americans will be fooled by their smoke and mirrors about future hydrogen-powered cars and the wonders of a future "hydrogen economy." Never mind that without a coherent, rational national security and economic strategy, it will take market forces by themselves thirty to fifty years to overcome the many economic and physical obstacles to a hydrogen economy.
Bush and company lacks a realistic program for dealing with the coming "peak oil" situation--that is, the point between now and 2020--depending on which oil geologist you believe--where mankind will have pumped exactly half of all oil civilization will ever burn on this planet. Some Republican ideologues claim we have more time and that the point of "peak oil" is perhaps twenty to forty years away rather than between now and 2020. But this kind of nit-picking around the edges completely misses the point.
American national and economic security requires that we must start now to squeeze maximum efficiency out of our current energy use, and start the research and development and development of new energy sources and the commensurate economic infrastructure for the inevitable post-petroleum world. This includes immediate actions to wean the American economy off its current 2.5 million barrel per day dependence on Middle Eastern oil over the next few years. It also includes government investments in new energy technologies and development of new clean, environmentally friendly, and renewable energy sources, and a society-wide objective of gradual replacement of oil with other sources in an orderly, minimally disruptive manner over the next few decades.
As I previously mentioned, the Bush Administration seems to think that only if we destroy what remains of the Alaska wilderness, bamboozle the press and people with premature visions of the hydrogen economy, and a massive, unprecedented commitment to reviving nuclear power, the energy problem will be solved. Well, Mr. Bush, unfortunately it isn't quite that simple--nothing as complex as energy, national and economic security ever is.
It is a scandal that the Bush Administration apparently is unaware of, or perhaps shows no interest in, one of the most brilliant ideas to come along in a while: hybrid gasoline/electric motor vehicles you could also plug in overnight. As pointed out recently by Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, most people drive about 30 miles or less per day. Thus why not add another battery to hybrid cars, and allow them to be plugged in to recharge batteries?
This way, more than ninety percent of all urban auto trips could be made on electricity, not liquid fuel. People would only need to top off with gasoline--or with renewable alcohol or "bio-diesel"--once in a while for longer commutes or weekend trips to the mountains or seashore. This clever refinement of proven technology, if built into the vast majority of new cars over the next ten or fifteen years, would quickly overthrow the tyranny of non-renewable oil. Now, reducing gasoline usage by eighty percent or more will require major new investment in the electric grid and an environmentally-sound system of producing and recycling the new battery technology. But this should be a lot less financially risky and much more secure than the riverboat gamble of continued reliance on the Saudi royal family and other archaic regimes.
In their haste to bamboozle the public with the relatively long-term promise of hydrogen, the Bush Administration also forgot that studies indicate that direct carrying of electricity over the grid is twice as efficient than using hydrogen in an entirely new infrastructure of conversion stations, pipelines, and hydrogen gas compressor stations. Rather than waiting decades for the hydrogen infrastructure to develop, we can start NOW with beefing up the electric grid and converting the American motor vehicle fleet to pluggable hybrids.
We can also start NOW to develop our "Saudi Arabia of Wind Power", which is the Great Plains generally west of the Missouri River and other windy areas such as the great basins of Nevada. We can connect this new reservoir of clean, infinitely renewable electricity to the Midwest, California, and elsewhere with new extensions of the national electric grid. For those uses such as airlines and over-the-road trucks where electric power is not really applicable, in many of the same rural areas we can develop the latest techniques of squeezing alcohol, bio-diesel and other bio-liquid fuels from purpose-grown, infinitely renewable crops.
We can apply the latest technologies to liquifying coal and other means of avoiding the pollution and greenhouse gas problems inherent in directly burning of coal. In some cases, on a limited scale we can adapt the latest nuclear technology from China, assuming safety of course but also remembering that ultimately uranium supplies, while vast, are also limited like oil.
Eighty to one hundred years ago, the United States led the world in railroad and electric urban transit technology. Unfortunately this leadership now resides in Europe and Japan. In recognition of the simple fact of physics that the rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails is about ten times less than rubber tires on pavement, the U.S. should revitalize electric urban light rail and commuter rail transit, resurrecting old lines and constructing new infrastructure where needed. We also need an immediate crash program to convert all urban transit and school buses to hybrid electric power, using the same technology as the pluggable hybrid/electric automobiles mentioned earlier.
Within 10 to 15 years, at least ninety percent of Americans in our cities and suburbs should be within a half-mile--that is an easy 10-15 minute walk--of electric rail transit on routes where patronage justifies the extra capital costs, and everywhere else within this easy walking distance of expanded, frequent bus rapid transit running every 10-15 minutes all day, every day, using state-of-the-art hybrid/electric technology. Americans are certainly as clever as the Europeans and Japanese and can make our cities just as livable or more so, using modern transit, land use and communications strategies, as well as suitable and appropriate technologies.
We can also begin the retrofitting of our cities and suburbs to make them more walkable and safe enough to travel by bicycle. This would help combat America's growing obesity problem and help relieve the stress of modern civilization available through recreational walking and bicycling. We can help reduce the high cost of car payments and insurance by experimenting with per-mile payment for the new hybrid automobiles, so if you only need to drive a few hundred miles per month, then you aren't stuck with hundreds per month in car payments and insurance.
We also shouldn't forget the lessons of our friends in the little country of Switzerland who never had any oil or coal resources, but plentiful, renewable hydroelectric power. America's mainline freight railroads should be converted to electric traction power over the next 10-15 years on the busiest routes where traffic justifies the capital expense. In return, the government should strike a deal with the private freight railroads to expand electrified passenger train service on existing routes, and also on new passenger routes where needed.
Taking a second cue from our friends in Japan and France, we should also begin the expensive but necessary process of building new 200 miles per hour plus high speed rail lines, both connecting existing markets between cities, but also connecting between these corridors. For example, we should immediately begin construction of a 3,500 mile transcontinental high speed electric railroad route connecting the Northeast, Midwest, Memphis Fed Ex hub, with Arkansas, Texas, Arizona to Southern California plus associated feeder rail routes.
This route would parallel not only the busiest air corridors in the nation, but also the busiest truck corridors, along the so-called NAFTA freight route between Michigan, Indiana, Texas, and Mexico. This high speed electric transcontinental rail corridor would not only bridge the "passenger gap" between 500 mph air service and 60-70 mph travel by auto, but also the "freight gap" between 500 mph but very expensive air freight, and slower 60 mph truck freight and slow 20-30 mph bulk but very cheap rail freight.
This 200 mile per hour plus rail line should allow someone to travel cross-country in less than 24 hours, greatly improving the market share of the current slow long distance Amtrak trains, particularly to in-between places that will NEVER have affordable air service. The importance of fast but cheaper freight service has also been illustrated by very fast but still relatively expensive parcel freight like Federal Express. If anything, this cheap and fast freight service that does not yet exist is as important as fast passenger service to spreading economic security and prosperity to America's vast rural areas, and not just concentrating it in our large urban regions.
The evidence indicates that in the final analysis, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party lack any fundamental faith in the American people. They don't believe in our collective ability to rise when necessary to gigantic challenges. And I also point out, our inherent ability to rise to take advantage of gigantic opportunities to improve our economic security and quality of life. Never mind that this country did rise to such tremendous challenges after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and with a vengeance. When the Soviet communists fired off the Sputnik satellite ahead of us Yankees, we Americans hunkered down, did what was necessary, and within a dozen years, Americans walked on the moon. When the cornucopia of military and other government research were "ready for market," Americans turned around and quickly and productively developed entire new industries such as jet aircraft and airlines, computer chips, personal computers and the Internet.
When of necessity in the 1970's, a Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, and a Democratic Congress quickly passed the original mileage standards for automobiles. This led to greatly improved energy efficiency and built the foundations of the economic prosperity claimed by President Reagan and the Republicans as their idea in the 1980's and 1990's, and effectively postponed the day of reckoning on the oil problem for a quarter century until now.
But when a new type of Pearl Harbor came along on September 11, 2001, what did the Bush Administration do?
Instead of providing leadership and rallying Americans to developing a new energy economy, eliminating dependence on the goodwill of the Saudi royal family, and thus truly enhancing our long-term security, the Bush Administration took partisan advantage to scare us into an ill-considered war against Iraq who turned out not to have any weapons of mass destruction, and to pursue government-sanctioned advantages for their buddies in the oil industry and a galaxy of other Republican corporate clients.
And to stampede Congress into passing unconstitutional measures like Patriot Act Two or TIA, more useful for spying on Republican political enemies and old hippies than actually catching terrorists and other criminals.
Continuing with the current cartoon plot called Bush Administration policies, is like Wile E. Coyote continuing to chase, but never catching the Roadrunner, or looking for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck at Disney World. As Bugs Bunny would say: "What a bunch of maroons!"