In Which I Insult My Betters

Okay, now in most cases I'm not fit to lick Juan Cole's boots. I concede this readily. The man is an accredited expert in the Middle East, and lived in Lebanon during the civil war there. I, meanwhile, am an accredited high school graduate, and survived my family's latest Christmas dinner. However, I feel no hesitation at all to call bullshit when Juan writes:

If you don't like the dependency [on foregin (Saudi) oil], here are your present options:

Put in wind generators like crazy. They're just about competitive at the current $60 a barrel price, and would help national security. They also make a lot of noise (or at least give off vibrations) and are annoying, and if you put them in the wrong place they'll kill a lot of birds.

Put in nuclear power plants. They don't produce greenhouse gases and are economically viable (especially if you factor in the cost of global warming otherwise, and of national security). They also sometimes melt down and they produce a byproduct that can be used to make very big bombs, and their waste is toxic and lasts thousands of years.

Go to solar panels , as Germany and Japan are doing, and now California. On the surface, solar is more expensive than fossil fuels (at the moment, ten times more expensive). Few are going to volunteer to pay a $1000 for something they can get for $100. But if you factor in the costs of global warming, who knows? Also the production of photovoltaic cells involves the use of some pretty toxic materials, which will become a pollution issue eventually.

Now, these are all good ideas (except the nuclear one) in their own right, but not a single one will affect the state of the oil markets one iota. There's a very simple reason for this - cars, trains, trucks, and planes don't run on electricity. Oil is America's largest source of energy, but it's almost non-existent as a source of electricity. Generating more electricity - whatever the source - won't affect oil imports in any case.

Now, if we started to build cars and trains that could run on electricity, the situation changes dramatically. I've long advocated plug-in hybrids which get part of their travel on electricity alone. To recap - most people don't drive more than 40 miles in a day. Therefore, a car which can get 40 miles without using gasoline effectively runs entirely off the electrical grid most days. (Cars which could also use gasoline mixed with biofuels could make a huge difference quickly.) Trains are already beginning to compete with trucks on shorter and shorter distances as fuel prices continue to climb - trains use fuel 8 times more efficiently than trucks, so they're affected by fuel price increase much less.

Now, Juan's post (and I suppose this one) are timely, because Bush is signing the US's energy bill today. Huzzah! The US will continue to offer massive subsidies to coal, oil, and nuclear energy while offering no practical help to renewable energy. Surprisingly, the bill does emphasize energy efficiency and conservation. This is surprising given that Cheney famously sneered at conservation, calling it a "virtue" but denying that it could help America. I'm watching Bush's speech now - he very pointedly called conservation a "public virtue" and important to America. So this is all nice and fuzzy.

Of course, none of this actually matters. OPEC is announcing a production increase - but nobody seriously thinks that will change matters. (With prices where they are, the member countries have almost certainly been pumping all they can, OPEC or no.) The President of the world's largest energy-consuming nation announces an energy bill, and nobody expects any significant changes. Meanwhile, the price of oil continues to climb - almost $64 today.

The reality is this: Even Exxon (!) is admitting to the reality of peak oil. Someday soon we are going to start taking less oil out of the ground than we did the day before, and things are going to start changing. When that happens, we're going to have to start taking non-fossil energy seriously.