(no subject)
It was less than two years ago that author Kurt Vonnegut posted an online essay entitled “Cold Turkey”, in which he wrote that Americans “are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial.” At the time, I couldn’t have possibly imagined anything resembling that statement coming from the mouth of President Bush. After all, we are talking about a Texas oilman (albeit an unsuccessful one) whose vice-president was CEO of an oil services company. His foreign and domestic policy seem always to have based on the desire to find ever more oil, both for the sake of the American way of life and for the oil executives who paved his way to the White House. So if anything, my reaction to the Vonnegut piece was a wistful sigh and the words, “If only the President thought so.”
Well, now he apparently does. As many of you will recall, the five most memorable words from this year’s State of the Union were “America is addicted to oil.”
This is a bold stand - one that’s been a long time coming - and it carries special resonance coming from this man. More than perhaps anyone else, a recovering alcoholic knows the difficulty of admitting and confronting an addiction. There are certainly parallels between alcohol and oil addiction, but a more apt comparison might be to the more potent narcotics. We’re talking about a substance available only from a handful of (often dangerous and unstable) sources, and at an ever-growing cost. A substance that provides temporary satisfaction, but is incredibly damaging to one's long-term health and well-being. A substance without which the user is entirely unable to function until s/he can obtain the next fix. Cocaine? Heroin? Or petroleum?
Like most addicts, America has been lying to itself for a long time about its oil habit - trying to pretend it’s not dangerous, it’s not hurting anyone, and that we can quit whenever we want to. But it’s time for a wake-up call; it’s time for a man to step up to the microphone and say unflinchingly, “We have a problem. We can’t keep doing this. We’re addicted, and we need to change.” President Bush - a man who understands the meaning of addiction - did just that, and I applaud him for it.
Of course, there are still plenty of flaws in the plan he outlined. His goal “to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East” will only mean a change of 15% of our overall oil usage, and still allows the possibility obtaining oil from environmentally destructive oil drilling in ANWR and other parts of the non-Arab world. Many will question how “clean [and] safe” nuclear power is. And until the President commits to the Kyoto treaty and to the reduction of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, one suspects that his administration’s “business first, environment second” policy will remain unchallenged.
But that doesn’t change the magnitude of the opportunity we’ve been given as environmentalists. Just as only Nixon could open China to the West, only Bush has the power to change our national paradigms about oil and energy. We can choose to criticize his plans as being too weak or misguided; we can point out that the left has been saying this for decades; we can accuse him of making empty promises. Or we can stand behind him, and hold him to those promises, and with him start making the changes necessary to save this country from itself.
I’m not sure I’ve ever stood behind something this president said, and I never thought that time would come. That time is now.
Well, now he apparently does. As many of you will recall, the five most memorable words from this year’s State of the Union were “America is addicted to oil.”
This is a bold stand - one that’s been a long time coming - and it carries special resonance coming from this man. More than perhaps anyone else, a recovering alcoholic knows the difficulty of admitting and confronting an addiction. There are certainly parallels between alcohol and oil addiction, but a more apt comparison might be to the more potent narcotics. We’re talking about a substance available only from a handful of (often dangerous and unstable) sources, and at an ever-growing cost. A substance that provides temporary satisfaction, but is incredibly damaging to one's long-term health and well-being. A substance without which the user is entirely unable to function until s/he can obtain the next fix. Cocaine? Heroin? Or petroleum?
Like most addicts, America has been lying to itself for a long time about its oil habit - trying to pretend it’s not dangerous, it’s not hurting anyone, and that we can quit whenever we want to. But it’s time for a wake-up call; it’s time for a man to step up to the microphone and say unflinchingly, “We have a problem. We can’t keep doing this. We’re addicted, and we need to change.” President Bush - a man who understands the meaning of addiction - did just that, and I applaud him for it.
Of course, there are still plenty of flaws in the plan he outlined. His goal “to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East” will only mean a change of 15% of our overall oil usage, and still allows the possibility obtaining oil from environmentally destructive oil drilling in ANWR and other parts of the non-Arab world. Many will question how “clean [and] safe” nuclear power is. And until the President commits to the Kyoto treaty and to the reduction of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, one suspects that his administration’s “business first, environment second” policy will remain unchallenged.
But that doesn’t change the magnitude of the opportunity we’ve been given as environmentalists. Just as only Nixon could open China to the West, only Bush has the power to change our national paradigms about oil and energy. We can choose to criticize his plans as being too weak or misguided; we can point out that the left has been saying this for decades; we can accuse him of making empty promises. Or we can stand behind him, and hold him to those promises, and with him start making the changes necessary to save this country from itself.
I’m not sure I’ve ever stood behind something this president said, and I never thought that time would come. That time is now.