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Why Energy Independence Really Matters

Posted by Chris Berry on August 14, 2008 in Elections and Voting, Energy and Environmental Issues

After sitting on their hands for the last 35 years, American politicians have finally taken up the call for energy independence. Sadly, it was not a recognition of the true national security significance of the issue, but a short-term spike in the price of gasoline during an election year that finally spurred them to action. The recent invasion of Georgia by Russian military forces should serve as a wake up call to anyone who has yet to grasp the true reason that energy independence is so vital to our national security.

Iran’s nuclear program would not be possible without the enormous revenues from the sale of oil, and their expressed desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth could be dismissed as an empty threat. Venezuela would just be another insignificant banana republic if the socialist agenda of Hugo Chavez were not financed entirely by oil exports. With the exception of North Korea, every country that represents a major threat to global stability is financed entirely by the sale of oil and natural gas.

The first Cold War ended when the Soviet Union collapsed under the burden of unsustainable military spending. Since then, massive oil and gas discoveries have allowed Russia to rebuild it’s armed forces and once again threaten global security. It also allows them to keep their neighbors in line by turning off the spigot whenever it serves their political purposes. There is every reason to believe that we are on the brink of a second Cold War, and it will be financed by the sale of oil and natural gas.

Many people believe that the greatest threat to peace and stability in the world comes from radical Islamists, who also rely directly or indirectly on oil revenues to support their terrorist activities. The fact of the matter is that the majority of Arab countries produce nothing besides oil, and for the most part they are not even capable of getting it out of the ground on their own. These countries would rank among the poorest in the world if it were not for their vast oil revenues, and they would certainly be in no position to finance terrorist activities. To illustrate how truly insignificant their global contributions are, all you need to do is look at international patent applications filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization. In 2006, the United States applied for 49,555 international patents. In that same year, Saudi Arabia and Egypt applied for a combined total of 86, while the rest of the Arab world combined produced a grand total of 32 applications.

While our political leaders focus on reducing the cost of a gallon of gasoline, they seem entirely oblivious to the larger issue. For the sake of our economic well being, and in the interest of global security, we need to focus on rendering oil obsolete as a source of energy. Doing so will require a total commitment on the part of the American people not seen since World War II, and a massive public and private investment in renewable energy infrastructure on a scale far greater than any proposal currently under consideration. The technology already exists to produce all of the power we need from a combination of nuclear, solar and wind, and we need to begin putting it to use immediately. We can either continue to finance our enemies by buying their oil, or we can render them impotent by dramatically devaluing their only resource.

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