Today, President Obama set a goal that, in ten years, we will import a third less oil than we do today.
We can do better, a lot better. In 1961, faced with a Soviet Union bent on dominating the world, President John F. Kennedy embarked us on a mission to the Moon. It seemed foolish to think, at the time, we could land on the Moon by the end of the decade. Yet we did it. The tools existed in 1961, and we had will to use them. We can do great things, because we have done them.
Today, we have the tools to get off oil. It might seem foolish to think that we can do so, but we can.
Starting today, the Dylan Ratigan Show is holding a three-day energy summit live from Oklahoma on how to free America from mideast oil as part of our innovative Steel on Wheels Tour featuring a diverse array of guests from energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens to Ashwin Madia of VoteVets.Org.
We need three "More"s to get there.
1) More investment in "less"
2) More clean demand
3) More of us than them
Let me explain what I mean.
1) More Investment in "Less"
Imagine if we could triple the number of power plants that we had online, without using nuclear energy, burning one more brick of coal, oil, or natural gas, or even sticking a wind turbine or solar cell on a roof. We can. It's a power source that American has in spades. It's called efficiency. And it's one of the best ways to "generate" more energy. Right now, we have a 34% efficiency rating, which means that we waste two thirds of the energy we burn. So if we tripled it, or even just brought ourselves up to where other countries are, we'd save trillions of dollars.
Where efficiency has been tried, it has succeeded.... wildly. It can be done at a utility level, a state level, a company-wide level, or a national level.
- California has achieved consistent energy efficiency gains for three decades, and the cost of power per kilowatt of "efficiency" is about a fifth that of generating a kilowatt from coal, nuclear, or natural gas.
- Dow Chemical's Louisiana Division held a contest to identify and fund energy saving projects from 1982-1993, and the return on investment ranged between 170% to 340% a year.
- OPower has saved 215,000,000 kilowatts of electricity by working with utility companies to encourage customers to turn off the lights.
- Germany will be completely off fossil fuels and nuclear power by 2050, and that country's strategy relies heavily on efficiency gains.
- America saved more oil from one 2005 piece of legislation (26 billion barrels) on efficiency than we have in proven reserves (23 billion barrels).
So let's do it.
2) More Clean Demand
We know how to make clean energy. The sun sends enough energy our way in six minutes to power our civilization for a year. We can generate energy from the sun, from wind, from tides, and from natural gas as a bridge fuel. There are safe nuclear designs.
The problem is not energy, we are drowning in it, the problem is political. Let's look at the "cost" of oil. At the pump, the price is between 3-4 dollars a gallon. Once you figure in the costs of our military, the medical and human costs from pollution, hidden subsidies in our tax code, the real price is between $10-15 a gallon (Michael Milken pegged it at $14/gallon, which is roughly what I came up with independently).
If gas were at $10-15 a gallon, you'd see market mechanisms kicking in to get us off oil. In some ways, all we have to do to ratchet up demand for clean energy is get rid of these off-balance sheet costs of oil.
Italy has already figured out how to make solar energy cost competitive on their grid. German farmers are profiting with wind turbines on their farms, because they are allowed to sell energy back to their utilities through feed-in tariffs. But here, China is eating our lunch.
Michael Liebreich, CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, added, "The United States remains the global leader in clean energy innovation, receiving 75 percent of all venture capital investment in the sector, a total of $6 billion in 2010, but the U.S. has not been creating demand for deployment of clean energy. As a result it is losing out on opportunities to attract investment, create manufacturing capabilities and spur job growth. For example, worldwide, China is now the leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels."
We invented alternative energies here. Let's beat China on clean energy the way we beat the Soviet Union to the Moon.
And finally, the third problem.
More of Us Than Them
We all want clean energy. Some of us want it because it's safer, some because it's cheaper when considering all the costs, and some because securing oil in places controlled by very nasty people is a very nasty business. But we want it. Our government isn't delivering the framework to let us invent and deploy it. It's time to recognize why. I called it "The Coalition of the Status Quo".
Oil Industry - Exxon is the most profitable company in the world for a reason, and it wants to stay that way. BP likes being able to profit, blow up the Gulf of Mexico, and then profit again. Koch Industries is owned by America's original oligarchs, David and Charles Koch, who are jointly worth $44 Billion. These companies like America's dependence on foreign oil, because it means we're dependent on them.
Wall Street - The capital flows that the oil industry generates are catnip for the banks. Citigroup loves making money helping oil companies hedge and manage their capital, and JP Morgan and Goldman manage the money from petro-states. In fact, the "global imbalances" - spurred by oil - that Ben Bernanke loves to point at are a major profit center for the big banks. Our dependence on oil means that we need to finance that dependence, and that means we're dependent on the banks to figure out ways to do that.
Washington, DC - The only housing market in the country going up right now is in Washington, DC. We all know why. The relationships that oil and finance have with our political establishment, through think tanks, donor bundling, and politicians, are deep. And the politicians love it.
To beat them, we have to build and enlarge "the Coalition of the Future."
Industrialists - Our massive trade imbalances have damaged our domestic industries severely. Thankfully, some companies like our sponsor Nucor Steel, and individuals like T. Boone Pickens, are beginning to speak out for a different national strategy.
Environmentalists - The environmental movement were the original conservationists, and they have been pushing for an end to oil dependence longer than anyone.
Young people - The oil-driven economy is no longer working for our youth. The economic ladder has been pulled up behind them, and their opportunities for jobs are far more constrained than their parents generation. They also also more comfortable with energy efficient urban living, and less tied to cars.
Veterans - With more than a decade of warfare in the oil-rich Middle East, America has a crop of veterans that are deeply attuned to energy interests. Newer groups like VoteVets.org have members that are interested in energy and security. A generation of younger veterans are coming into the workforce deeply attuned to the need for a new national strategy on energy.
Now, oil interests and Wall Street are powerful, but here's the good news - there are more of us than there are of them. Thankfully we are still society in which that still counts for something. Now the challenge is to gather more of us and to vote for politicians willing to implement innovative policies like the carbon tax + dividend that will push America to finally achieve the true energy independence we need.
Germany is going to be completely off oil and nuclear fuels by 2050. There's no reason we can't beat them there.
We at the Dylan Ratigan Show would like to invite you to join us in creating "more of us" by joining our live town hall tomorrow night on energy at Oklahoma State University at 8pm eastern time. Panelists include:
· Boone Pickens, Oil Tycoon & Founder, BP Capital Management
· Ashwin Madia, VoteVets.org
· Bob Deans, Director of Federal Communications, Natural Resources Defense Council
· Former CIA Director James Woolsey
We're also asking people around the country to help us out. Anyone that has a thought, idea or question that you would like to ask the panel via Skype, email info@DylanRatigan.com to find out more. You can also follow the conversation via twitter by following @DylanRatigan and #SteelonWheels, and at Facebook.com/DylanMSNBC.
To become apart of our streaming syndicate, please also email info@dylanratigan.com.
Follow Dylan Ratigan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DylanRatigan
we won't be even using oil in ten years. this will all change much faster than anyone is dreaming right now.
US corporations and oil corporations held back all innovation to get off oil and change auto fuel, but now it's too late....Mother Earth is rockin'.
Many are loath to turn off lights of turn down the thermostat, and use water sensibly because of their warped understanding of this decades old concept of "manifest destiny", all egged on by likes of BP and brothers Koch profiting from this very energy habit.
You are asking junkies to check into rehab. That's not something they do on their own.
helped by our lazy, fat assed government.
Hello Corn-unism.
Kind of hard to say this 40 years out, you state this like it's a fact.
Ask Pickens if his justifications for cancelling his wind farm plans are still valid, or ever were.
I suppose our militay is going to just go back in the box and let the other powers of the world take control of the middle east oil WAKE UP
A. Obama wants to use less energy.
B. Obama wants the economy to grow.
C. Economic growth results in more energy use.
Conclusion: We can't have both.
I'm not claiming the above is absolute truth, but it still raises questions in my mind.
It is what has been don for 200 years. The just never had the TV Media to wip the public into a willfull frenzy before.
Whip, Whip
"The increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from private inventory investment and state and local government spending."
Most of what we consume implies energy use in many ways, When you purchase something at a store or market, it had to be made somewhere. Then it had to be shipped, either from on the otherside of the world or across the endless highways and freeways of the U.S. That goes for everything from the shampoo you're using to the slice of lettuce served at a restaurant.
Get the lobby's out of Washington; get the Congressmen out of their lunch and golf dates with industry; get the money out of politics and we'll soon find that there are solutions pounding at the doors for most of the phony problems that the Reapuglycant's are perennially squealing about. They just squeal to get more money thrown into the pen. If we cut the money, we'll soon see the squealing stop, and after a while real business will get done.
Reagen did. It is morning in America again. With higher deficets and more oil imports but we felt better.
A massive investment in clean energy and 21st century transportation and infrastructure requires the federal government, and we no longer have the kind of government that can get us to the moon, win World War II, or deliver Social Security and Medicare to its citizens. What we have today is a dysfunctional joke, starved for revenues by thirty years of looting by the obscenely rich. And a huge, loyal constituency of right wingers who carry water for the rich and have enough electoral muscle to keep the liberals out of Congress and out of the White House for decades hence, if not permanently.
We can't do it here and we won't do it here. But the Chinese, the Japanese, the Germans and other advanced European and Asian peoples may save the day.
Hopefully your efforts wll awaken all of us to the need to be responsible in our use of energy. The Oligarchs and empirists aren't evil people, maybe you can lead them away from their misplaced desires. Challenge them to be responsible.
Conservation is still the first line of defense. Buy Walmart cheap close is the second folly. Every gallon of gas subsidises Walmart price fixing model. Until transportation is reflected in the Price of WalMart goods. We are blowing in the wind.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42400389/ns/us_news-environment
The above article concerns a deal that BP just made to begin deepwater drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico this summer. Amid all the allegations of purgery and unsafe practices that lead to 200 million gallons or more raw crude into the Atlantic. Even with pending charges against BP we are still going o give them oil rights in the Gulf. The Global Corporate interest is grinding its boot heal into our economy one more time. Talk of effenciency and importing less oil while we give what we have to the Brittish, wonder who made the most in that deal.