America needs therapy

[Declan McCullagh]

Until Sep. 11, at least, we may have adopted a cost-benefit
approach. Non-oil fuels are far more expensive, and more radical approaches
like wiring homes for solar would be quite intrusive and also expensive.

So perhaps (note I'm not saying our politicos were actually this smart or
that this is good foreign policy) the thinking was that by interfering 
in the middle east, which has a high cost, the benefits of cheap oil
justified it.

-Declan


On Sun, Sep 30, 2001 at 03:48:39PM -0700, Steve Schear wrote:
> Its angering how much lip service though little progress has been made 
> since 1973 on freeing America from her chemical dependence on petroleum in 
> general and mid-east oil specifically.  If the U.S. had no direct economic 
> interests in the mid-east would it be propping up the governments of 
> Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or contending with Iran and Iraq, etc? 
> More likely our response to problems in the area would be similar to our 
> involvement in West Africa.  This dependance has made us little more than 
> oil junkies and you know that junkies will do whatever it takes to get 
> their next fix.  If America wants to break this cycle of state violence and 
> co-dependency it needs to get energy therapy in a hurry.
> 
> steve