MoveOn.org Prioritizes "Energy Independence"
Posted by Glenn on June 2, 2006 - 4:59pm in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: energy independence, global warming, oil, peak oil [list all tags]
In an online poll of it's members on top 3 priorities for the next year, Healthcare just barely edged out Energy Independence by 4,000 votes. And Energy Independence had more than double the votes of Global Warming. I think this shows that Energy Independence (Rather than just environmentalism) is clearly high on the progressive agenda.
The results are in. We're proud to announce the MoveOn member choice for our new, positive agenda:
These three goals were nominated, debated, and overwhelmingly selected by more than 100,000 people in local house parties and then online. Most groups would say this is a far too risky way to make such a big decision. But it's this grassroots consensus that makes this agenda different--and powerful.
- Health care for all
- Energy independence through clean, renewable sources
- Democracy restored
So what's next? This month, we'll launch a major campaign for a clean energy future, starting by breaking the vise-grip of big oil in Washington with our "Oil Free Congress" initiative. Expect hundreds of local events, advertising, national media attention and accountability at the ballot box--and that's just for the first of our 3 new goals.Of course, we won't let up in our work to end the war in Iraq, and we'll still respond to immediate threats in Congress. But our new agenda will focus our long-term work, offer voters a positive, inspiring reason to support progressives on Election Day, and push Democrats to think big and fight hard.
And they end with this plea for new new members:
Let's be clear: we've chosen big goals here, and seeing them through won't be easy. There are powerful interests who prefer things the way they are, and we'll never match them in sheer dollars or backroom deals.Our strength lies where it always has: the voice, energy, and creativity of 3 million MoveOn members. If we're going to make health care a right, power America with clean energy, and restore our democracy, we're going to need as many likeminded folks on board as we can get. So today, we're turning to you to help build the team.
I realize that TOD attracts people from many different political persuasions, but I think we can all agree that this is a major watershed. In the past progressives focused most of their political efforts related to energy on the defense - stop nuclear, stop drilling, stop everything...even the Kennedy clan coming out against off-their-shore wind power. Now MoveOn has a clear mandate to push in a positive direction for energy independence. The risk, which is already evident in their "Oil-free Congress" idea is that scapegoating and name calling are considered "positive action". Another risk is that they fall for some "sounds good, but is completely unrealistic one-shot solution", like "We'll just do it like Brazil on ethanol".
They must realize that, when it comes to the Politics of Oil, the Discourse Must Change
The clear path to energy idependence is to dramatically reduce demand for energy in an economically responsible way that is sustainable and equitable. This means everything from Alan's rail electrification proposal to taxing gasoline to finding ways of using less fossil fuels on the farm. It may even require more nuclear!
And I think the folks over at Daily Kos have produced a pretty good blueprint.
But still, this is progress for those of us deeply concerned about peak oil and it's potential impact on economics and our society. While a few years ago, energy was pretty low on the national consciousness, it is now atop the US national political agenda. How that plays out, depends on us good citizens bringing sanity, data and logic to the debate.
There is a state of being, a value that is more important and significant that energy independence and that is fossil fuel independence. What have we ultimately gained if we become independent of the middle east while, we at the same time ravage our mountaintops and the atmosphere with domestically produced coal and Canadian produced oil sands, all the while plundering our topsoil with Iowa produced ethanol?
Using big oil as the enemy is a dangerous paradigm. It misdirects us from the real source of our problems, that being us. We would not even be talking about this if it weren't for high gas prices. If they don't rise much higher, we won't be taling about this a year from now.
However, energy independence is a worthy goal and a great starting point for the real debate on energy.
Most important is redefining the term to include independence from energy.
The sooner the US is not starting wars for control of energy, the better.
All you need to do is watch "A Bug's Life" for a little inspiration. The grasshoppers may be strong and scarey, but once you realize the ants have strength in numbers anything is possible.
"There will be massive efforts with unconventional oil, such as Canadian tar sands and the tar and very heavy oil deposits in Venezuela. However, I predict that unconventional sources of oil will only slow--and not reverse--the decline in total world oil production because of the time and energy needed to expand production of these "oils".
"Without question, we have to reduce greatly our energy consumption to account for this new reality. What can we do? I have seen two very sensible proposals.
"The first is that we fund Social Security and Medicare with a tax on energy consumption, especially at the gas pump, offset by reducing or eliminating the highly regressive payroll taxes. Doing this would unleash enormous free market forces against profligate energy use. The second proposal is that we electrify our freight railroads and encourage freight to go by rail instead of truck with any of a variety of economic incentives while building electric urban rail systems, such as DART, at a rate much faster much faster than today's pace. Incidentally, both strategies will also find favor with those concerned about global warming."
It does make sense, however, to set up a body or use and existing body, to monitor how we are doing each year and adjust the tax accordingly to ensure that we meet our goals. And we do need specific goals for carbon reduction.
On the other hand, the Kos approach may be more politically feasible. Because the carbon tax is relatively simple, and I mean relatively, perhaps it would be easier to shoot at ensuring that it is dead on arrival. I guess we need to impose costs and a little pain without people noticing, the American way.
Conservation, i.e. "demand destruction" is a political topic that no politician wants to discuss, because it can be marginalized easily before a uninformed public, or more emphatically, a public that doesn't tolerate any bad news.
The folks at the Daily Kos have IMO created a throughly unworkable hodgepodge of approaches ranging from the "no reason that that won't work" [such as solar water heaters] to the 50 percent carbon reduction sequestration edict scheme [Where were you when the lights went out for good?].
Pick an approach. Advocate that approach and complementary approaches. Advocate research that might provide real break throughs or even silver pellets even if out of the mainstream ... but for the love of logic don't buy into this shopping list as it isn't even for sale.
Is it just the lack of a concise message? Are you saying they should pick a particular project and let others pick up the rest of the list?
Speaking as a hodgepodger/generalist myself, I am well aware of the shortcomings of losing focus and trying too many things, getting spread out too thin.. Then again, I see energy as complicated, life as complicated, the solutions to losing our one, biggest draft-horse as a complicated blend of elements that will have to somehow be stretched out to fill a big shoe. Some answers are supplyside, some are demand, and finding out what we actually need, after a few generations of having access to many extra 'wants'.
You probably just got my goat by mentioning Solar Heating. I think that's one of the best ways to free up liquids and gases for transp, but it's too 'Sweatery' for people to get all excited about. It's so simple. My house burns about 12gal/day of heating oil through the cold months, and there are millions of homes and businesses that do the same.. Solar air and water heating could knock a huge chunk of that out.. if China doesn't get ALL our copper before we decide to start really putting them in.
Read throught the list. Ask yourself if they aren't getting just a little too cute with the sequestration of massive quantities of carbon dioxide [to way below current levels if the goal is energy self suffiency. My suppostiion is that they tacked that one one only to appease one of the core left wing consituent groups -- the hard core greens.
AReduced CO2 emmissions is not bad objective, but the massive reduction that was proposed struck me as nothing more than pandering.
Our copper? Is this the same idea as OUR oil under THEIR sand?
"What's behind the thefts is the rising price of copper, brass and aluminum and the demand for scrap metal in China and Taiwan, some say. On Wednesday, depending on the grade, copper sold for $3 to $3.10 a pound at Ace Scrap Metals, 5900 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis. Aluminum sold for 70 cents to $1 a pound, and brass went for 90 cent to $1.75, depending on the grade."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisstatenews/story/C5A77E83E088F13C8625718000 16615E?OpenDocument
I don't claim the earth's mineral rights in the name of the US, but like the question of 'Energy Independence', I feel the issue is what we are throwing away, and at our own peril. What we treat as junk and even as a simple, movable commodity could be, like copper, a resource with enormous value if we look to possible uses (like solar hot water) that might call for a stockpile that we, in typical short-sightedness and devoted Market-sensibility, have allowed to ship overseas instead of creating a strategic reserve, or at least applying to countless current needs here at home.
Please, please name one right-wing blog that discusses energy issues without bring up the Oil-for-Food scandal or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
If you do and they allow unfiltered comments (highly doubtful), I will rip them a new hole should they say something stupid (highly probable).
There are more cornucopians there than there are here, but they do show up reqularly on The Oil Drum.
There are plenty of posters on Free Republic who can do the math, those that work in industry and know that if you don't drill you won't know but also know that oil is getting harder to find ...
You probably won't get a lot of support if you focus on caribou breeding grounds & migration routes. After all there are more caribou in the herd around Prudoe Bay than before that field was drilled. and there are also those that can recognize the difference between the Strikingly beautiful portions of the Brooks Range that seem to appear in ANWR stories and the not very photogenic Coast Plain where the targeted structures are located.
I personally have a mixed reaction to the ANWR drill / no drill debate. As an American, I would love to have it in reserve, except that it would be a reserve that could only be tapped after a five to ten year development effort which would not add much to security.
ANWR is not a silver bullet and may not turn out to be even a silver pellet. If I had to summarize my position on ANWR if would be that that both those that want to drill and those that oppose drilling are waging propoganda campaigns when what is needed is an honest examination of the facts.
If you decide to pay a visit to Free Republic, I would advise you to make reasoned arguments. If you try to "tear them a new ass" and you probably will be banned.
I meant a place where you don't get banned for saying something that does not follow strict fundaminionist lines.
Besides, Free Repubic just gives me the creeps and willies. They don't call then Freepers for nothing.
None of that has gotten me banned and I don't expect that it ever will.
I feel pretty much the same way about Democratic Underground that you do about Free Republic. I haven't spent much time reading Move On's writings, but I have not been impressed by their pronouncements as related by the main stream media. To each his own. Freedom of association is a good thing.
For instance, Instapundit has recently written some stuff here, but it is all nonsense and you can't comment.
And the Powerline bloggers only talk about Oil for Food and claim that Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is enviro-nazi stuff w/o addressing PO issues. And you can't comment.
As far as I am concerned, you have not provided a significant right-wing site that talks sensibly and openly about oil depletion with any kind of accountability.
Where do you think that there is an honest debate underway?
I have previously expressed my opinion that both the tree hugging tundra loving caribou conscious types and the drill everywhere pave it now growth at any cost crowd are being totally dishonest about ANWR and many other topics.
BTW do you think The Oil Drum is discredited because people like you and me can post using a screen name if we so chose?
- seeing the forest
- corrente
- political animal
- blogging of the president
- culture of life
- ezra klein
- atrios
- billmon
- maha
- agonist
- daily kos
You will not find anything like that on the right. They do not because it is not in their corporate best interests and it is not in the fundamentalist view of dominion over Earth. This basically covers the conservative right.I think that for the "religious" right wingers, PO is an inconvenient truth because accepting it then raises the question as to what benevolent diety would leave his followers in such a pickle and leave so much oil under the soil of the competing diety --you know, the Muslim God.
Additionally, for right wingers who worship Adam Smith, PO brings in to question why the markets are heading in the wrong direction and driving society toward the cliffs. In theory, the markets are supposed to do what is best for all of us thanks to the intelligent design of the Invisible Hand. PO proves otherwise. Therfore it is an iconvenient truth for them too.
Either they worship Adam Smith or Corporate Interests. Of course, corporations are the concrete manifestation of Smith's abstract theories, so they only worship Smith in an indirect way. Cronies, nepotoads and others in their local business sphere are the real godz.
I was suggesting that maybe because it conflicts with other parts of their ideology. That's all.
Either they acknowledge it and it exposes them, or they ignore it and no one brings up their ulterior motives.
Peak Oil is an inconvenient "mismatch" for the ideologies of many an organization or set of groupies, not just for the religious right.
- Free market capitalists don't like it because it means the Invisible Hand has been driving our auto-loving masses blindly towards the cliffs.
- Techno-fix geeks don't like it because it implies that they have not come up with the whiz bang fix (i.e. fusion) for this pickle of a problem.
- The Government-knows-best idealogs don't like it because it forces them to admit that the government did not see this one coming (refused to see it coming) and thus, just maybe governement does not always know best.
Wherever you look (except in the doom & gloom closet), Peak Oil is not one of those things that meshes well with the respective world models that the various groups hold so dear to their chests.(Every religion has answers to such challenges. No need on your part to point to the lobbyists who cause the IH to enter the minds and souls of our good public officials. Those lobbyists are authorized and certified prophets of the IH religion.)
But his Secretary of Defense was the former GM President and talked him into making them freewuys, not oll roads and going through cities.
The rest is history, and many square miles of concrete.
I have a free market capitalist worldview but I prefer real markets with competition where new competitors can enter fairly easily.
I am definately a techno-fix geek, I can talk about dozens of large and small techno fixes.
I believe a government can be both strong and competent, if it concentrates on vital core functions.
I am even right wing, within Swedish politics of course.
But my combination might be quite odd, I am afraid I am an individual that will have a hard time finding the right group to work with for maximum mutual benefit. I kind of wish I were a social group starter good at handling humans and relations and not only a man of ideas and fuzzy logic. :-/
Am I the only one who gets the impression that fundamentalists are mentally ill? Religion is getting in the way of thinking logically to try to mitigate PO and its problems. A rapture, if it occured and people were in fact raptured, it would be an instant disaster. Planes would fly on autopilot until they run out of fuel a la Payne Stewart, cars, suddenly unmanned, crash and cause gridlock. Trains continue on course and crash Payne Stewart-like, and ships drive until they run out of fuel with the tanks on suction. It's yet another case of religionists advocating disasterous violence onto unbelievers.
They need to phase out the problem, not put it on life support.
You folks in NYC would really laugh if you came to the Bay Area - huge SUVs abound, I see more hummers here than I ever saw in right-wing Orange County.