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more than 1,600 of these new 1.7 gigawatt nuclear plants to meet our current gasoline needs alone (replacing diesel and jet fuel would require additional capacity). The US today has 104 commercial nuclear power plants, many of which will reach the end of their safe working lives in the next few decades. A final point to consider is that uranium too, is a limited resource, deposited in relatively rare rock formations by fluvial processes over eons of geologic time. Even if we could build 1,600 new nuclear power plants, we would have a hard time finding the uranium to operate them.
The third Bush pipe dream is one shared by many well-meaning people - replacing gasoline with corn-derived ethanol. But it takes a lot of fossil fuel to grow corn and process it into ethanol: fertilizer manufactured from natural gas, diesel to run farm machinery and transport grain, electricity to run irrigation pumps, and coal to run the fermentation process are just a few of the inputs used. As a result, the energy returned on energy invested (EROI) is either negative or just barely in the positive, depending on which study you read. In a recent interview, agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry put it this way: "... ethanol is just a way to get rid of surplus corn ... to start raising a burnable fuel from your cropland at the present cost in erosion and soil degradation and toxicity is a fool's bargain."
The answer to our oil addiction is not the desperate, chaotic search for the next fix. We do need energy, it's true, but just as alcohol and drug addictions are symptoms of an unmet spiritual need, so our oil addiction is the symptom of a society out of balance, and it is that imbalance we must address first.
One of the 12 steps to recovery from addiction is to take a personal, moral inventory of oneself. If we took such an inventory of America, what would we find? I believe we would find a deep-seated moral failure going back to the frontier days when European immigrants poured into a vast continent that seemed free for the taking. Beginning with the genocide of the native people, the American dream was not only about freedom and independence, it was also about the rush and the boom and the getting rich quick, applied with such furious dynamism over the past two centuries that the getting and spending is never ending and the shopping only stops when we drop from exhaustion.
America today consumes one out of every four barrels of oil that the planet produces. We are already at war over Iraq's oil and may soon go to war over Iran's.
But again, we have to move on from admitting we have a problem to admitting that we can't solve it on our own. And we can't afford to wait out Bush's last 1,000 days, nor can we wait till the next congress, hoping the Dems emerge with some strength from the fall elections. We need leadership now.
Democrats have been throwing themselves on the gas price bandwagon in recent days, calling for price gouging legislation and better regulation of oil markets to control price manipulation. A windfall profits tax and revoking oil company subsidies are also on the table. These are important measures, but the Dems risk going too far down the quick fix path without addressing the real problem.
The Toronto Globe and Mail reported on a memo from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to candidates that instructed them to: "Demonstrate your dedication to fighting for middle-class families by clearly explaining how you will work to keep down the price of gas if elected to Congress."
And so, Senator Bob Menendez, D-NJ, for example, has proposed rolling back the federal gas tax for two months - exactly the wrong strategy. Keeping down the price of gas this summer cannot be the Democrats' primary goal if they want to lead the country away from oil addiction. We have to admit we have a problem and we have to ask a higher power to help us, not pander to our immediate appetites.
A gas tax is one of the higher powers we should be appealing to. A tax levied by a democratically elected government in the people's interest is truly a higher power, a sacred trust. While American drivers are consuming some of the cheapest gas on the planet, Europeans are paying $6 to $7 a gallon, mainly because of higher taxes. Higher gas prices have encouraged more efficient vehicles and mass transit alternatives, putting Europe far ahead of us on the path to sustainability.
Jerome a Paris at Daily Kos titled an entry last week: "Gas prices - what's the right strategy for the Dems?" He said: "I'd like to argue that Dems must, today, argue for a gas tax, and own it." Paris listed four critical benefits of higher gas taxes:
they increase gas prices, thus encouraging Americans to use less gas. By reducing demand, that will lower oil
prices and thus both the volume and the cost of oil imports;
they raise funds that can be used to help those Americans that will suffer from higher prices;
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