DEC/JAN 2002
Thoughts
in the Presence of Fear
Wendell Berry
The
Prospect of Peace
Daisaku Ikeda
Reducing
Dependence On Oil Will Ensure America's National Security
US
Civil Rights in Serious Jeopardy
Michael Ratner
Engineering
Consent on the Domestic Front
Danny Schecter
The
Emperor is Naked
Don Kyhote
Green
View of Fundamentalism vs. Modernism
Kelpie Wilson
The
One Eternal Truth
John Darling
World
Trade Organization Continues to Fail
Danila Oder
McKenzie
River Gathering: Funding Change for 25 Years
Richard Seidman
Dreams
and Visions: The Fountain of Wisdom
Royal D. Alsup, Ph.D.
From
Survival to Serenity
Ianna Bredal, MBA
Environmental
Film Festival Coming to Ashland
Barry Snitkin
Herbal
Help for Winter Weather
Chanchal Cabrera, MNIMH, AHG
How
to Make the Most Out of Your Therapy
Julie Weber, MSW
Taking
Aim at Blame
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP
Understanding
Problem Behaviors of Animals
Jocelyn Y. Whidden
The
Christmas Presence
Peter Melton
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Reducing Dependence
On Oil
Will Ensure America’s National Security
Excerpted from a speech by Bill Moyers. Moyers gave the keynote address at the Environmental Grantmakers Association Conference, October 16, 2001
In the hours after the attacks [of September 11] many environmental organizations stepped down from aggres-sively pressing their issues. That was the proper way to observe a period of mourning … in work like this you have to read and respect the mood of a country in crisis, or a misspoken word, even a modest misstep, could lose you the public’s ear for years to come.
But the polluters and their political cronies accepted no such constraints. Just one day after the attack, one day into the maelstrom of horror, loss, and grief, Republican senators called for prompt consideration of the President’s proposal to subsidize the country’s largest and richest energy companies. While America was mourning, they were marauding. One congressman even suggested that eco-terrorists might be behind the attacks. And with that smear he and his kind went on the offensive in Congress, attempting to attach to a defense bill massive subsidies for the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear companies. To a defense bill! What a shameless insult to patriotism! What a slander on the sacrifice of our armed forces! To pile corporate welfare totaling billions of dollars onto a defense bill in an emergency like this is repugnant to the nostrils and a scandal against democracy!
But this is their game. They’re counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They’re counting on you to be standing at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket.
Let’s face it: they present citizens with no options but to climb back in the ring. We are in what educators call “a teachable moment.” And we’ll lose it if we roll over and shut up. What’s at stake is democracy. Democracy wasn’t canceled on the 11th of September, but democracy won’t survive if citizens turn into lemmings. If, in the name of the war on terrorism, President Bush hands the state over to the energy industry, it’s every patriot’s duty to join the local opposition. Even in war, politics is about who gets what and who doesn’t. If the mercenaries in Washington try to exploit the emergency and America’s good faith to grab what they wouldn’t get through open debate in peace time, the disloyalty will not be in our dissent but in our subservience. The greatest sedition would be our silence.
Yes, there’s
a fight going on against terrorists around the globe, but just as certainly
there’s a fight going on here at home, to decide the kind of country
this will be during and after the war on terrorism. To the Irishman’s
question, “Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it?” the
answer has to be: “Come on in. It’s our economy, our environment,
our country, and our future. If we don’t fight, who will?”
What should our strategy be? Here are a couple of suggestions. During
two trips to Washington in the last ten days I heard people talking mostly
about two big issues of policy: economic stimulus and the national security. How
do we renew our economy and safeguard our nation? If you want to fight for
the environment, don’t hug a tree; hug an economist. Hug the economist
who tells you that fossil fuels are not only the third most heavily subsidized
economic sector after road transportation and agriculture—they also promote
vast inefficiencies. Hug the economist who tells you that the most efficient
investment of a dollar is not in fossil fuels but in renewable energy sources
that not only provide new jobs but cost less over time. Hug the economist
who tells you that the price system matters; it’s potentially the most
potent tool of all for creating social change.
Do we want to send the terrorists a message? Go for conservation. Go for clean, home-grown energy. And go for public health. If we reduce emissions from fossil fuel, we will cut the rate of asthma among children. Healthier children and a healthier economy—how about that as a response to terrorism?
As for national
security, well, it’s time to expose the energy plan before Congress for
the dinosaur it is. Everyone knows America needs to reduce our reliance on
fossil fuel. But this energy plan is more of the same: More subsidies
for the rich, more pollution, more waste, more inefficiency. Let’s
get the message out.
John Adams, the head of Natural Resources Defense Council, says the terrorist
attacks spell out in frightful terms that America’s unchecked consumption
of oil has become our Achilles heel. It constrains our military options in
the face of terror. It leaves our economy dangerously vulnerable to price
shocks. It invites environmental degradation, ecological disasters, and potentially
catastrophic climate change.
Here are two simple facts we need to get to the American people: First, the money we pay at the gasoline pump helps prop up oil-rich sponsors of terrorism like Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Quaddifi. Second, a big reason we spend so much money policing the Middle East—$30 billion every year, by one reckoning—has to do with our dependence on the oil there. So John Adams got it right, the single most important thing environmentalists can do to ensure Americas national security is to fight to reduce our nation’s dependence on oil, whether imported or domestic.
In addition to finding the September 11th attacks to be totally intolerable, we must also find intolerable that one billion people worldwide struggle to survive on $1 a day, that more than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and that 3 billion people have inadequate access to sanitation. If we are serious about stopping terrorism, then our goal must be to reduce the level of pollution, fear, and poverty in the world.
If this is truly our goal, and if we devote our actions and resources to its accomplishment, the support for the bin Ladens of the world will inexorably evaporate. People who would have otherwise sided with the terrorists will be clamoring to tell us who and where they are, and to help us find and defeat them. This goal is too costly, many say. But this is not true. The cost of our initial military response will easily top $100 billion (on top of our already enormous annual defense budget of $342 billion). What could we accomplish if we spent even a small fraction of that much on programs to alleviate human suffering?
In 1998, the United Nations Devel-opment Program estimated that it would cost an additional $9 billion (above current expenditures) to provide clean water and sanitation for everyone on earth. It would cost an additional $12 billion, they said, to cover reproductive health services for all women worldwide. Another $13 billion would be enough not only to give every person on Earth enough food to eat but also basic health care. An additional $6 billion could provide basic education for all.
These are large numbers, but combined they add up to $40 billion—only one fifth as much as the $200 billion the U.S. government agreed in October 2001 to pay Lockheed to build new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) jets.
Our government leaders have not hesitated to build an international coalition and to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to defeat those who launched the attacks of September 11th.
What if we were equally as dedicated to building an international coalition to eradicate hunger, to provide clean water, to defeat infectious disease, to provide adequate jobs, to combat illiteracy, and to end homelessness? What if we understood that, today, there is no such thing as national security as long as the basic human needs of large portions of humanity are not met? In today’s world made transparent by television and other telecommunications, any country that attains prosperity unshared by its fellow nations can only breed resentment and hatred.
- John Robbins, Global Renaissance Alliance www.renaissancealliance.org
