Another day, another global warming denial op-ed by George Will in the Washington Post. But today, instead of rebutting Will's insanity, idiocy, whatever you want to call it, let me try a little thought experiment. OK, George, let's just say that there's no global warming. Let's just assume, for argument's sake, that - in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - mankind's emissions of greenhouse cases are not melting the glaciers, raising sea levels, acidifying the oceans, etc. Does that mean we should halt our efforts to slash anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions? Let's think about this one...First off, let's consider the economics of our fossil fuel dependence. According to the US Energy Information Administration, in 2008 we imported (net of exports) $351 billion worth of crude oil, $37 billion of refined petroleum products (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, etc.), and $26 billion worth of natural gas. We also exported about about $4 billion worth of coal and coal coke, for a total net fossil fuel trade deficit of $410 billion in 2008. This compares to a merchandise trade deficit for the United States of $821 billion in 2008. In other words, the fossil fuel trade deficit makes up almost exactly half the entire U.S. trade deficit. To put it another way, if we imported no oil and natural gas, our net trade deficit in 2008 would have fallen from $821 billion to just over $400 billion.
What could we have done with that extra $400 billion in our pockets? Well, we could have just given every man, woman and child in this country about $1,300. Not too shabby. Or, we could have taken just one fifth of that money - and remember, we'd save it every single year - and paid for high-quality health care for all Americans, including a robust public option tied to Medicare rates (the current Senate health care bill costs $849 billion over 10 years, or $84 billion per year). Or, we could have spent about 2% of that money and started building ourselves a national "clean energy smart grid" (cost: about $8 billion per year over 20 years), allowing us to " use long-distance, extra-high-voltage transmission lines to move remote clean-energy resources to power load centers" while saving ourselves the $100 billion per year we lose because of blackouts and other existing power grid problems. Or, we could have given each of 15.4 million unemployed people in this country a $27,000 per year job (or half of them a $54,000 per year job). Or, we could have nearly funded the entire Department of Defense (2010 budget: $671 billion). Or, we could have paid for the Departments of Education ($47 billion), Transportation ($73 billion), Health and Human Services ($77 billion), Veterans Affairs ($56 billion), Homeland Security ($43 billion), State and other international programs ($52 billion), Energy ($26 billion) plus NASA ($19 billion), and still had $7 billion left over to pay for the National Science Foundation.
Anyway, we could go on and on all day with this, but you get the picture: the $400 billion we spend every year on fossil fuel imports is a huge amount of money, and we could do enormous things with it. But no...much better to send it overseas, that's apparently what George Will believes. Brilliant!
Speaking of sending the money overseas, where do our fossil fuel import expenditures go exactly? Well, in 2008, we had a net trade deficit of $42 billion with Saudi Arabia, birthplace of 15 hijackers on 9/11, birthplace of Osama bin Laden (where his family is wealthy, overwhelmingly off of money the Saudis got by selling oil to countries like ours), source of funding for fundamentalist Islamic "madrasas" all over the world, etc., etc. We also had a $20 billion trade deficit with Iraq, which we've now fought two major wars with over the past 18 years - first because Iraq invaded another major oil exporter (Kuwait) while threatening another (Saudi Arabia), next because we thought that Iraq was using its oil export revenues to fund a weapons of mass destruction program, terrorism, etc. - at a cost of trillions of dollars. Let's see, in 2008 we also ran a $39 billion trade deficit with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. And, although we didn't import oil from Iran directly, our 20 million barrels per day in oil consumption helped keep world oil prices high and fund Iran's nuclear program.
The point of the preceding paragraph is that, aside from the huge economic cost our "oil addiction" entails, there's also a major national security price to pay. Would our war with Iraq in 1991 have taken place if we had not imported any oil? Doubtful. Would 9/11 have happened if we had never been so heavily involved in the Middle East as we were, largely because of oil? Highly unlikely, given that Osama bin Laden frequently cites the "permanent presence of infidels [aka, U.S. military forces] in Arabia." In addition, Bin Laden apparently felt "that Americans were 'too near to Mecca' and considered this a provocation to the entire Muslim world." Bin Laden also was angered by sanctions against Iraq imposed following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Bin Laden called those sanctions "the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known." Without oil, we almost certainly wouldn't have been in Saudi Arabia, and without that, Osama bin Laden almost certainly wouldn't have attacked us. And if 9/11 had never happened, would our second war with Iraq - the current one - ever have taken place, at the cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives? Extremely unlikely. Would we be pondering another potential war in the Middle East, this time against Iran, if we consumed no oil and if, consequently, those countries earned only a tiny fraction of the oil revenues they currently earn? Extremely unlikely. This could go on and on, but you get the point.
The bottom line here is this: we haven't even talked about the issue of global warming, yet we've already got two incredibly powerful reasons - economics and national security - to get off of oil (and, to a lesser extent, natural gas) as soon as possible. As far as coal is concerned, we don't import it so there are no particular adverse economic or national security implications there. However, there are at least two other, major problems with coal: 1) it is not suitable for transportation fuel unless you liquefy it or convert the entire vehicle fleet to electricity, both of which would be very expensive (among other things, we currently spend about $300 billion per year on retail electricity in the United States - $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the country) and take many years to accomplish,; 2) there are many other environmental problems than global warming associated with coal production and consumption, including mountaintop removal (and the damage that does to communities and ecosystems), emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, etc. Again, that's not even counting the contribution of coal-fired power plants to global warming, which George Will apparently doesn't "believe" in - as if this is a matter of "belief" and not massive, overwhelming, and extremely diverse scientific evidence.
In sum, even if George Will is right - which he most definitely is not - about global warming, it is still imperative - for urgent economic and national security reasons - that we get off of oil ASAP. And it would still be advantageous for us to slash our natural gas and coal consumption, for both economic and local environmental reasons. Adding in the environmental, economic and national security costs of global warming, and the case is absolutely overwhelming. Even if you're a "climate change skeptic," there's still a strong case to be made for taking out an "insurance policy" in case climate change is really occurring, and if our failure to act now will lead to disaster in a few years down the road. And, even if you're a "climate change skeptic," why not move towards a new energy economy that will benefit us anyway? Why not stave off the adverse impacts of global warming, even if there's only a 20% chance (or a 50% chance or whatever you "believe," as if this is a matter of "belief" - which it most certainly is not) that it's occurring (note that the chances that global warming is taking place are actually about 99.9999999999999999%. again based on the overwhelming scientific evidence collected for decades now)?
You know, I'd really love to hear George Will attempt to answer all those questions. Of course, I'm sure he can't do so, just as he has no serious response to the overwhelming empirical evidence of anthropogenic global warming. Shoddy thinking, shoddy research, shoddy writing: is that why the Washington Post gives George Will a prominent platform to spout his drivel every Sunday in their newspaper? Yeah, that must be it. WTF, Washington Post?!?
