A lot of my writings of late have been concerned with the immediate, real-lives impact of the oil hell off our coast. I've decided to lift my gaze from the heartbreaking tonight. And stare into the terrifying.
The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future.
--President Barack Obama June 2, 2010
What will that mean? What will it require? What are the obstacles we face? Is it really possible?
People talk of the "powerful" insurance lobby or "powerful" banking industry or "powerful interests" supporting this or opposing that. One doesn't hear so much about "powerful" oil companies. It'd be like calling the Almighty "divine."
Oil isn't powerful. Oil is power. Oil is government. Oil is policy.
Oil is war and oil is peace. Oil is the alpha and omega, the star of a one-man show that's sold out the house for a hundred years.
At the risk of seeming to endorse the conspirophilic writings of a now-banned poet from these parts, you really can't turn over a rock from the past century without spotting wriggling oil maggots.
"We attacked Iraq because of oil?" Dude, oil is why there is an Iraq to attack.
"Control of these oil supplies becomes a first-class war aim"
--Sir Maurice Hankey
This is the centennial year of the oiled British Navy. Before 1910, all HRM's powered ships were coal-powered ships. In 1910, the Admiralty began the transition to oil. By the end of the War to End Wars, the demand of the combatants' navies and self-powered mechanized land forces had caused a worldwide shortage of petroleum. With victory in hand and the control over the greatest known reserves at stake, the victors wasted no time in using their new position to assure themselves access to oil. (See Paul: Great Power Conflict Over Iraqi Oil: The World War I Era, also Catherwood: Churchill's Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq.)
Oh, I'm sorry. Too far back? Ancient history? Perhaps a later war would be more illustrative of petroleum's supremacy in geopolitics. Okay. Take a sec and google up "pearl harbor, us oil embargo." It's okay, I'll wait...
Ah, yes, the Good War, fought by the Greatest Generation to secure Freedom. But perhaps that's also a bit too archivally sepia-toned. I mean, surely, we didn't fight wars, kill innocents, topple governments after World War II merely for oil reserves, eh?
I'd tell you to ask a fellow named Mossadeq about that but, sadly, he's no longer available for questioning.
Lord knows I'm not going to besmirch the names of beloved American leaders simply because they might have had some successes in oil and, um, related fields.
I don't have to detail every intersection of petroleum, policy, intelligence, war and finance. If you've paid half an hour's attention to the information available on this and countless other sites, it's hard not to conclude that oil, the possession of oil, the control of where oil is produced and to whom it is sold, has been, shall we say, a significant factor in the events of the last hundred years.
Oil is power. Not just the power to push you down the highway, but the power to push people on and off thrones, to push sovereign countries into and out of existence, to push comfortably isolated millions into battle. Oil is power. Oil is the master, and has been for three generations and more.
If our aim, if our president's aim, is truly to wean this addict nation from the juice that's filled our veins through our greatest expansion, to change utterly and irretrievably how we power our dreams, it is imperative that we, and he, understand what we will face in opposition: a century-old confluence of vast financial resources, interconnected intelligence interests and military power that has remade the world more than once.
Some right-wing doodahs got up in arms recently when I wrote "Unless we use this moment, use the deaths of species and the suffering of people who depend on them, in the most cynical, calculated way, as bad as a Republican after 9/11, to make real, lasting change in how we address the costs of our way of life." They seemed to think that, by pointing out my call for political use of a crisis, I--and you, and the president--would be shamed into giving up any effort to alter our country's energy policy. Pols in my state are currently shrieking like little girls surrounded by mice at the thought that a job or two could be lost if we don't offer petroleum companies carte blanche to despoil our coast again.
These are mosquitoes. If it really appears that we may turn public policy from the petrocentric realpolitik of the past hundred years, such shots over the bow will be popguns by comparison.
If we, as I believe we must, are to put down the oily syringe and demand that our society find new sources of energy, we are going to have to first conquer power structure woven into every part of our, and everyone else's, nation.
This will not be simply a matter of driving a hybrid out of the garage. We are going to have to drive the oilchangers from the temple.
I hope we are equal to the task.
Peace, all. Drive less if you can.
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Go watch the video. I need the hits.