Jeffrey Sachs on oil war

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Fighting the wrong war

George Bush's battle to control the world's oil supply has cost
billions of dollars, much more than it would have cost to discover new
sources of energy.
Jeffrey Sachs

September 25, 2006 10:43 AM / GUARDIAN

It always comes back to oil. The continuing misguided interventions in
the Middle East by the United States and the United Kingdom have their
roots deep in the Arabian sand. Ever since Winston Churchill led the
conversion of Britain's navy from coal to oil at the start of the last
century, the Western powers have meddled incessantly in the affairs of
Middle Eastern countries to keep the oil flowing, toppling governments
and taking sides in wars in the supposed "great game" of energy
resources. But the game is almost over, because the old approaches are
obviously failing.

Just when one is lulled into thinking that something other than oil is
at the root of current US and UK action in Iraq, reality pulls us
back. Indeed, President Bush recently invited journalists to imagine
the world 50 years from now. He did not have in mind the future of
science and technology, or a global population of nine billion, or the
challenges of climate change and biodiversity. Instead, he wanted to
know whether Islamic radicals would control the world's oil.

Whatever we are worrying about in 50 years, this will surely be near
the bottom of the list. Even if it were closer to the top,
overthrowing Saddam Hussein to ensure oil supplies in 50 years ranks
as the least plausible of strategies. Yet we know from a range of
evidence that this is what was on Bush's mind when his government
shifted its focus from the search for Osama bin Laden to fighting a
war in Iraq.

The overthrow of Saddam was the longstanding pet idea of the
neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which was already
arguing in the 1990's that Saddam was likely to achieve a stranglehold
over "a significant proportion of the world's oil supplies." Vice
President Dick Cheney reiterated these fears in the run-up to the Iraq
war, claiming that Saddam Hussein was building a massive arsenal of
weapons of mass destruction to "take control of a great portion of the
world's energy supplies".

Cheney's facts were obviously wrong, but so was his logic. Dictators
like Saddam make their living by selling their oil, not by holding it
in the ground. Perhaps, though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil
concessions to French, Russian, and Italian companies rather than
British and US companies.

In any event, the war in Iraq will not protect the world's energy
supplies in 50 years. If anything, the war will threaten those
supplies by stoking the very radicalism it claims to be fighting.
Genuine energy security will come not by invading and occupying the
Middle East, or by attempting to impose pliant governments in the
region, but by recognizing certain deeper truths about global energy.

First, energy strategy must satisfy three objectives: low cost,
diverse supply, and drastically reduced carbon dioxide emissions. This
will require massive investments in new technologies and resources,
not a "fight to the finish" over Middle East oil. Important energy
technologies will include conversion of coal to liquids (such as
gasoline), use of tar sands and oil shale, and growth in
non-fossil-fuel energy sources.

Indeed, there is excellent potential for low-cost solar power,
zero-emitting coal-based technologies, and safe and reliable nuclear
power. Solar radiation equals roughly 10,000 times our current energy
use. We tap that solar power in many fundamental ways - food
production, wind power, hydroelectric power, solar heating,
solar-thermal electricity, solar panels - but the possibilities for
greatly increased use of inexpensive, widely available, and
environmentally friendly solar power are huge.

Coal, like solar energy, is widely available. It is already
inexpensive, but it is a solid rather than a liquid, a major
pollutant, and a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet all of these
problems can be solved, especially if we make the needed investments
in research and development. Gasification of coal allows for the
removal of dangerous pollutants, and coal can already be converted to
gasoline at low cost; a South African company is beginning to bring
that technology to China on a large scale.

Nuclear power, both fission-based and fusion-based, is yet another
possibility for vast, reliable, secure, and environmentally safe
primary energy. Here, too, there are technological obstacles, but they
seem surmountable. Of course, there are also major political,
regulatory, and security considerations, all of which need to be
addressed properly.

It is ironic that an administration fixated on the risks of Middle
East oil has chosen to spend hundreds of billions - potentially
trillions - of dollars to pursue unsuccessful military approaches to
problems that can and should be solved at vastly lower cost, through
R&D, regulation, and market incentives. The biggest energy crisis of
all, it seems, involves the misdirected energy of a US foreign policy
built on war rather than scientific discovery and technological
progress.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.