Political Hazards of a green agenda

Whose parents do not remember the quadrupling of the price of gas, the stock market crash, the government’s request to ban Christmas lights and the mandated national maximum speed limit of 55 mph during the 1973 oil crisis? The OPEC countries’ oil embargo countered the prevailing perception of the United States as the invincible superpower.  Now, Russia flexes its muscles by threatening Western-leaning Eastern European countries with oil price hikes and restricted exports.  The oil weapon certainly exists and the United States’ ever-increasing demand for energy leaves the nation particularly vulnerable.

As a Republican, I worry that the green movement prevents environmentalists and liberal politicians from seriously recognizing the dangers of continued dependence on Middle Eastern oil because of an overpowering and misguided desire to perpetuate green initiatives rather than stress the United States’ national security.  National security must come first.

Canada, which controls the second largest reserve behind only Saudi Arabia, currently supplies 20 percent of oil imports to the United States and this demand is projected to increase.  Evolving energy technology leads many to predict that the approximated deposit of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil in the Alberta oil sands has been underestimated.  Furthermore, the U.S. Energy Information Agency calculated that American oil demand would soon necessitate imports from Canada, especially from its oil sands, to almost triple in the coming two decades.

However, American environmentalists have targeted the oil sands and are currently attempting to influence the Obama administration to ban imports from Alberta because its production emits more greenhouse gases than standard oil drilling.

Although the oil sands generate about five to 15 percent greater emissions, they amount to only one-tenth of one percent of the global CO2 emissions.  This miniscule fraction should not overshadow the importance of increasing our oil trade with Canada for the United States’ national security, especially because President Obama refuses to develop domestic oil resources by repealing President George W. Bush’s mandate that sanctioned drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and resists new drilling in Alaska. Our nation needs a dependable, politically stable, neighboring, democratic ally to trade with in order to lessen our growing dependence on unfriendly Middle Eastern countries.

The current economic interdependence between Canada and the United States prevents any political disputes from possibly impeding the oil flow.  Thus, the only way to protect the United States from the increasing potential of hostile petro-states’ growing economic influence is to import more oil from the Alberta oil sands.

Environmentalists worry that the expansion in oil imports from Canada will not only augment the United States’ insatiable hunger for energy, but also inhibit the transition to alternative sources of energy.  Yet, existing substitutes have their own problems.  For instance, some biofuels and the electric car threaten to diminish an already inadequate fresh water supply and proponents of nuclear power first must determine where to dispose of spent fuel and how to guarantee the security of proposed nuclear plants.

Green-thumbed protestors also object to the environmental consequences of the oil drilling in Alberta.  Following a publicized incident in which 500 ducks died after landing on Syncrude pond, where the toxic water that separates the oil from the sand was dumped, the oil companies have redoubled their efforts to reclaim the land damaged by harmful strip-mining.  However, environmentalists continue to ignore these efforts and oil companies were infuriated when the BBC crew documenting the oil sands refused to climb Gateway hill in order to film a reclaimed site that boasts lush vegetation and a bison herd.

Most importantly, no matter how many times environmentalists chain themselves to the drilling machinery, the drilling will continue.  PetroChina has already invested almost $2 billion in the oil sands, and will happily import any oil that the United States rejects because of exaggerated green morals.  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative party and the opposition liberal party both support the continued production of oil in Alberta because of its consequential geopolitical power and the employment of hundreds of thousands.  President Obama should take a page from the Prime Minister’s book by recognizing that his objections to domestic drilling prevent a possible improvement to the current growing unemployment numbers.

There is nothing wrong with Jimmy Carter’s advice to lower the thermostat in the winter and wear a sweater.  Energy conservation is important and can help families in today’s current economic climate pinch pennies.  Once the United States became the most powerful industrial nation, its hunger for oil was inevitable.  Until a reliable alternative energy source can be universally implemented at a reasonable cost, we must realize that lessening our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern petro-states must take priority over the green causes that seem to have infiltrated the lawmakers’ political agendas in our nation’s capital.