August
18, 2008 Media Monitors Network
Mr. Obama, it increasingly appears
that the presidential election in November will be lost – perhaps not by
you, but by the rest of us who are being abandoned along the campaign trail in
your race for office.
There
is always the risk that the election will again be stolen by the Republicans,
by deceptive and negative campaigning, a contrived last-minute national
emergency, outright election fraud, or by a corrupt majority of the Federalist
Supreme Court.
You
may lose the election because of latent racism inflamed by negative campaign
ads and only revealed in the secrecy of the voting booth, but the greatest risk
to your campaign is that you are selling your soul to the political devil for
the support of powerful forces whose interests are not the same as the rest of
us – of every creed and color – whose only strength is our
individual vote.
Even
though you are opposed by one of the weakest candidates ever fielded by the
Republican Party, your traction is slipping and the polls are narrowing. Some of us have had the audacity to
hope for a real change and not just more rhetoric, empty promises and politics
as usual, but we are rapidly losing confidence in your ability and commitment
to make a real difference in our daily lives and the future of our children.
This
note not only highlights the pitfalls of your chosen path, but offers an
alternative and imaginative vision of an America that decided to generate the
energy to power its national highways from outer space – a vision of the
future in which all of us wins.
Same Ole, Same Ole
Mr.
Obama, working people are now paying more than $4 a gallon for gasoline to get
to jobs that pay less and less with fewer and fewer benefits; we can’t afford
to take our families on driving vacation to visit our national parks, and we
owe more on our SUVs than they are worth.
With the price of natural gas up 11 percent since last year and with
heating oil costing 36 percent more, many retired seniors will simply have to
bundle up and suffer the cold this winter. However, the oil companies just posted the most massive net
incomes in corporate history, and the employees of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and
British Petroleum have contributed more money to you this year than to your
opponent. Whose side are you on?
You
say we should explore nuclear power as a part of the “energy mix”; however, you
personally weakened a nuclear safety bill after “consulting” with the Exelon
Corporation, whose employees have contributed more than $180,000 to your
political campaigns. Is your
political pandering to America’s nuclear power industry the kind of change the
rest of us can safely live with?
You’ve
said, “I’m not just going to take a bunch of contributions from the coal industry
and do their bidding, any more than I would only listen to the
environmentalists”; however, the reality is that you supported an energy bill
in 2005 that provided a $1.8 billion tax credit for investments in “clean-coal”
facilities.
That
same legislation created a “Renewable Fuels Standard” that will double the
amount of ethanol used by 2012, even though the ethanol boom has diverted 100
million tons of grain from human diets to American car engines and has driven
double-digit increases in the cost of food for all of us. Did your subsidized flights on the
corporate jets of Archer Daniels Midland, the nation’s largest ethanol
producer, influence your decision?
You’ve
said your energy goals are “ambitious,” but they are really more of the same
ole, same ole. It sounds like you
are now willing to support offshore drilling, even though it cannot possibly
produce domestic oil for years and you will allow the oil companies to ravage
our fragile environment for even greater profits.
You
say you are for a “comprehensive” energy plan. However, forcing oil companies to drill on the 68 million
acres of Federal Land they already lease will further threaten our shared
environment, and a windfall-profits tax on oil companies to fund an “Emergency
Energy Rebate” will simply recycle the taxes back into
company coffers. It’s easy to say
that you want to invest $150 billion in clean energy and to produce 10 percent
of our electricity from renewables by 2012 and 25 percent by 2025. But, exactly how will you do it, if you
are elected?
There’s
little difference between your “New Energy for America” and Senator McCain’s
“Lexington Project,” especially since you have now reversed direction on
offshore drilling. Your proposed
alliance with the Senate’s “Gang of 10" to allow increased drilling and to
invest in renewables is not a visionary energy policy – it’s just more
hot air. The truth about energy is
that nothing proposed by you or your opponent will make one whit of a
difference when we pull up to the gas pump, either now or in the future.
Reality
Mr.
Obama, the $146 a barrel price of oil we just experienced was not caused by any
specific short-term interruption in supplies, as in the past. Speculation on futures may have played
some part in the spike of recent prices; however, the reality is that global
demand for petroleum far exceeds available supply.
Although
there has been some reduction in domestic consumption, and the price of oil has
now dropped to below $114 a barrel, worldwide demands will not decrease. Vehicle fuel is only one use for
petroleum, which is also required for many essential industrial and
agricultural derivatives such as rubber, plastic and fertilizer that are
driving the expanding economies of countries such as China, India and Brazil.
Petroleum
supplies are finite and once half of all oil has been extracted, it will become
increasingly difficult and eventually impossible to sustain any increase in oil
production. Once the production of
oil stalls at “peak” oil, access to the remaining oil will undoubtedly become
the leading cause of global military conflict.
Pessimists
contend that peak oil has already arrived, while optimists believe the peak is
still several decades in the future.
But, in either case, the day is rapidly approaching when we will have to
secure alternatives to petroleum if we are to continue to expand our economy,
or even to survive.
In
the meantime, our national security is becoming increasingly tied to the
petroleum supplies of our two primary global competitors: China – the world’s
fastest-growing consumer of oil, second only to the United States in its
consumption – who holds almost a $1 trillion in U.S. bonds and has
threatened a “nuclear option” to trigger a dollar crash if the U.S. continues
to apply pressure over currency reform, and Russia – the world’s second
leading producer of oil and its top producer of natural gas – who has
been earning enormous windfall profits from its petroleum exports and who has
the fastest growing economy in the G8 Group.
In
American Theocracy: The Peril and
Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st
Century, Kevin Phillips draws many parallels between the United States and
the rise and fall of the Spanish, Dutch and English Empires and wonders if the
U.S. will be displaced in the twenty-first-century global transition from oil
to a postoil regime by a new leading economic power, most likely an Asian one.
By
2025, the U.S. will have to import three-quarters of its expected thirty
million barrels per day of consumption.
Two of every three barrels of oil used in the U.S. is burned by cars and
trucks and that basic fact must be the central focus of any American energy
policy.
Although
many of us are not as informed about these global realities as we should be and
most of us only think about energy policy as we stand in shock at the gas pump
watching the dollars flash by, we are not alone in wondering if there is any
substance in your message of hope and change. Many Democratic leaders have recently expressed their fears
that you’ve yet to convert your popularity into practical solutions.
You’ve
said you want to keep America safe by achieving “true energy security.” You’ve said the trillion dollars we’ve
spent, unnecessarily in Iraq, could have allowed us to invest “hundreds of
billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy, to grow our economy, save
our planet, and end the tyranny of oil .
. .
We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail
and broadband and electricity systems . . . ” It’s easy to make a speech about what might have been, but
what is your vision for our future?
If
elected, you will either preside over the economic collapse of the United
States or lead our nation up the path to economic and democratic
salvation. Make a choice –
now – before it’s too late!
A Vision
Mr.
Obama, imagine for a moment that the Interstate Highway System and most major
streets and highways in America were improved to provide a constant source of
electromagnetic energy sufficient to power a standard automobile, with
comfortable seating for five adults, anywhere in America at no cost to the
operator.
Imagine
the introduction of triple-hybrid cars designed to operate primarily on
electromagnetic energy supplied through the surface of all highways and
freeways, and which are equipped with
small fuel efficient internal combustion engines to
supplement rechargeable batteries for trips on local streets and byways.
Imagine
we could travel for free throughout the United States as a matter of national
privilege. We could get to our
jobs without having to work for an hour each day just to pay for getting
there. We would have more money to
spend on vacations, and we would be able to tour our great nation, see the
grand sights, and visit with our friends and relatives along the way.
Is
this a realistic dream? If we
decided to provide free power on our highways as a matter of national policy,
where would we obtain the energy?
A Miraculous Source of Abundant Energy
Space-based
solar technology can provide an inexhaustible, safe, pollution free supply of
energy and is a far more logical solution than petroleum or ethanol-based, or
even nuclear-fueled hydrogen systems.
Satellites in orbit around the Earth and/or collectors on the moon’s
surface can be engineered to convert the sun’s radiant energy into electricity
24 hours a day, which can be safely transmitted by microwave beams to receiving
antennas on Earth.
Space
solar power is not a new idea.
NASA and the Department of Energy have been studying the issue for the
past 30 years and have found it to be technically feasible. However, given the domination of the
Bush administration by the oil industry, no research and development has been
done on space solar power since 2001.
If
we used space solar power to energize our nation’s highways, we could begin to
restrict the use of our remaining fossil fuels to the manufacturing of
synthetic materials and purposes other than energy. Ultimately, we could power the entire national economy by
space solar power and other renewable sources of energy, such as surface solar
and wind power systems.
Although
there are substantial costs associated with the development of space solar
power, it makes far more sense to spend our space exploration budget on
developing an efficient and reliable power supply for the future, than upon a
stupid and ineffective missile defense system. On the other hand, the development of space solar power
would solve one of the last major stumbling blocks to space exploration –
reducing the cost of moving material from Earth to orbit.
With
funding for the space shuttle ending in 2012 and for the space station in 2017,
America must decide upon a realistic policy for space exploration, or else we
will be left in the dust by other nations, such as Japan, China, and the
European Union, who are rapidly developing futuristic space projects.
The
first nation that captures and effectively makes use of space solar energy will
dominate the world economy for generations to come and will become a much
healthier and far more secure society.
Will you be the visionary leader to take us there?
William John Cox is the author of You’re Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the
Bush Presidency.
His political writings can
be found at http://www.thevoters.org,
and he can be contacted at u2cox@msn.com.
