Hermit Kingdom
Is there a more ridiculous phrase in the American political lexicon than “energy independence?” I don’t think so. Thus it features prominently in Rudy Giuliani’s “12 Commitments with a Cameo by Wilson Pickett.” But the concept is too stupid for Rudy to hog for himself. Hillary Clinton has plans for “promoting” it. Fred Thompson “talks about it” but the Democratic National Committee says only they have the plan that will “increase” it.
People. Shut up. Some figures and some more figures. The US used about 22 million barrels of oil a day in 2005. The US produced fewer than 9 million barrels a day. The US burned burned about 321 million gallons of gas per day that year. At 20 gallons per barrel, that means gasoline alone accounted for 16 million barrels. I figure most of that gas goes into cars and trucks, so if we doubled the mileage of every single vehicle on the road, we could cut that to 8 million barrels. So if we stopped using oil in any other form after doing so, our domestic production would just about do us – for awhile. American domestic oil production is in long-term decline.
If we cut total American oil consumption by 60% one way or the other, we’d be down to 2005’s level of production. Who believes that, a) this can happen any time during your lifetime; b) that US domestic production will still be 9 million barrels a day when that happens?
The concept of “energy independence” is a sham.
I think it’s generally code for “Then we can stop being nice to the fvcking A-rabs,” but this gets gussied up with terms like “instability” and references to Hugo Chavez., who has been around a lot less long than the Magic Words. (It is often also code for “let’s float politically connected domestic producers some subsidies!”) There’s no question that the oil-producing world is full of problematic regimes. But you don’t hear every respectable politician in the country calling for diamond independence or cheap electronic toy independence or independence in all the other things that come from places with dodgy politics.
Anthropogenic global warming is a very good reason to cut fossil-fuel consumption, but that means grubby American coal as well as greasy foreign oil. It has nothing to do with “energy independence.” Energy independence is just another dream of autarky. It would take so long to achieve any version of it worthy of the name that the politics of various oil-producing nations might be unrecognizable by then, for good or ill.
The only reason you shouldn’t automatically disqualify any politician who utters the phrase is that they all utter it, so you’d be disqualifying all of them. Actually, that’s not a good reason.
Comment by sglover —
June 12, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
And all of them, Dems and Republicans, devoted to disappearing the phrase “carbon tax”.
I think that subtext is there, yeah. They’re the last ethnic group that it’s alright to despise.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 12, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
What I’ve never understood is why they call it a “carbon tax”, when in practice it will be an oil, coal, and natural gas tax.
Comment by hermit greg —
June 12, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
Oh! But a brochure that Chris Dodd sent me today (what I get for living in Iowa) says there’s so! much! more! that energy independence, achieved through a carbon tax, can do:
Comment by sglover —
June 12, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
Ummmmm…. Cuz they’re all carbon-based fuels?
Comment by wade —
June 13, 2007 @ 3:08 am
how about banning the internal combustion engine, and making everyone live within cycling distance of where they work – hey presto! energy independance and obesity dealt with to boot….
Comment by cfw —
June 13, 2007 @ 7:33 am
Large gap in your 10 to 20-year analysis – nuclear power, which can be used with existing infrastructure to power transportation (cars). Nukes are say 20-25% of electricity production in the US, and much higher in France. If the US went to 80-90% of electricity from nuclear and used a large part of that electricity (highly portable power) for efficient vehicles, and encouraged (mandated, almost) use of available well-engineered engines (like Corolla) for personal transport, the US could have a much better relationship to carbon (including mid-east carbon).
This is not about independence so much as diversification, positively adjusting balance of trade, and controlling carbon based global warming.
I would also expect improved carbon sequestration tech in 4-8 years, and improved production and use of natural gas from US sources. We waste vast amounts of energy, and have lots of room for conservation and improvement in use of carbon without release into the atmosphere.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 13, 2007 @ 7:44 am
I think there’s a lot to be said for a more diversified energy portfolio. And if it means we rely a bit less on Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Texas, and Alaska (all illiberal states), well, icing on the cake.
Comment by Tim —
June 13, 2007 @ 10:23 am
Well, this is a good plan if the oil never ever runs out. Otherwise, not so much.
Comment by Davebo —
June 13, 2007 @ 10:59 am
What exactly would energy independance get us?
As far as I can tell, it is only useful in a situation where for whatever reasons, other countries refuse to sell us their oil. Which seems unlikely.
Are we going to nationalize our oil companies and affect price controls? Unlikely to say the leaste.
So in the end, we gain nothing from it other than burning our domestic oil instead of foreign oil.
If Iran decides to turn off the pumps for a month, our gas prices still rise.
Comment by Yuri Guri —
June 13, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
How much fuel does it take to maintain all of America’s military bases? Think about how much oil is consumed by the logistics of airlifting supplies to far-flung locations in over a hundred countries to support the US armed forces. (Not to mention the active wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which feature tanks, helicopters, warplanes, armored transports, and Humvees which all consume rather large amounts of fuel.)
Wouldn’t a significant amount of our current gas waste come to an end if we just wound down our global praetorian guard?
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
June 13, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
Yuri: it’s a lot in human-scale terms, but relative to the size of the US economy it’s pretty negligible. I am not sure our politicians are smart enough to understand that the US is most popular where we meddle in local politics the least, though….
Jim: I think it’s entirely possible that the US economy will be net carbon-zero in my lifetime. Solar and wind are getting better at an amazing rate, and it’s entirely possible that within five years wind will be the cheapest form of electricity production even without any taxing carbon. Solar is well behind wind, but is getting better even faster, and isn’t as dependent on our grid being maintained in a sane way. Throw in electric cars, and bio-engineered plastics, and there you go.
Comment by Yuri Guri —
June 13, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
Are there figures for this?
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
June 13, 2007 @ 4:34 pm
Yeah, check out the Defense Energy Support Center Factbook. In 2006 the US military bought 11.6 billion dollars worth of fossil fuels. That’s a lot of money, but only about 0.1% of total GDP.
Comment by ajay —
June 14, 2007 @ 4:18 am
What I’ve never understood is why they call it a “carbon taxâ€, when in practice it will be an oil, coal, and natural gas tax.
This is a very, very strange question. It’s called that because it’s paid on the amount of carbon dioxide (or equivalent other GHG) that burning the fuel produces. Or is there some other carbon-containing fuel which you think isn’t going to be taxed?
The other point is that, even if the US was “energy independent”, it would still depend on the Middle East for oil. Thanks to North Sea oil reserves, the UK is a small net exporter of oil. But oil is a fungible commodity. If something happens in Saudi and the oil supply drops, the UK economy still suffers, because the price of UK-produced oil will go up as well. The only way round that is to take the US completely out of the global oil economy by banning the import and export of oil.
Then prices can rise and fall in the rest of the world without affecting the US at all – just as house prices in London don’t affect house prices in New York, because you can’t export cheap houses across the Atlantic.
But somehow I doubt this is going to happen.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 14, 2007 @ 7:25 am
I guess the thing about the “carbon tax” lingo is that nobody wants to come right out and call it a fuel tax or (God forbid!) a gasoline tax. That would spark immediate backlash. The Democrats, for all their talk about energy conservation, threaten an investigation every time gasoline prices go up. And Republicans are willing to fight insane wars for the ostensible purpose of “securing” oil supplies. (Never mind that their efforts to “secure” Middle Eastern oil have made the region less stable and hence driven up risk premiums that get factored into market pricing.)
Comment by jlw —
June 14, 2007 @ 10:17 am
Most ofthe important points have been covered, but I’d like to “plug” plug-in hybrids as a really important development. For most people (not me–I don’t own a car) a plug-in hybrid could provide transport for their appointed rounds without resorting to gasoline at all. And according to EPRI, the electric grid and generating portfolio could handle a huge number of PHEVs without adding any new capacity.
So energy independence isn’t as outlandish as one might think. But it won’t be accomplished on the supply side.
Comment by Monte Davis —
June 14, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Here, have a couple-three slugs of Old Grassley or Hagel Bonded Reserve — so much better for you than that popskull Brazilian cachaca — and you’ll stop bothering your pretty little head about subsidies.