SENTIENT TIMES Dec/Jan 2002
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.
SENTIENT TIMES
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