In his State of the Union Address, George Bush uttered words that I never expected to hear him speak. Americans, he said, are “addicted to oil.” We need to break our dependence on foreign oil and embrace alternative energy sources. We need to achieve energy independence.
Huh?
This is the administration that, more than any other, has fostered oil dependence, an administration that has systematically gutted federal programs for conservation and for alternative and renewable energy sources, that has pushed tax breaks and tax loopholes for SUVs, that has censored science to defuse worries about fossil-fuel-induced climate change, and that until recently seemed to be betting America’s future on an innocuous and endless supply of coal and oil. What gives?
Iraq. That’s what gives.
In previous columns I have argued that the Iraq war is at bottom a war for control of Middle Eastern oil. Of course the Bush administration can’t admit that, and so it has fabricated many excuses. The danger of imminent attack by Saddam was an excuse, the idea that Saddam was in league with Osama bin Laden was an excuse, the weapons of mass destruction were an excuse—and, finally, the idea that we could build a peaceful democracy in Iraq was an excuse.
All these excuses have now proven false. Until very recently, it was still possible to cling to the last one. It was still possible, that is, that the U.S. would succeed in creating a pliant and friendly, perhaps even superficially democratic government in Iraq. This was always a long shot, of course—far longer than the neo-conservative strategists of the Bush administration were willing to admit, even to themselves. But it was at least possible.
The post-election violence, however, and the emerging Shiite dominance of the Iraqi government, army and police have made it clear that our occupation will have one of two results: (1) a protracted civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, or (2) the establishment of an authoritarian Shiite state more tightly bound to Shiite Iran than to the U.S. Such a government will not be much inclined to cater to our oil interests.
Indeed, the oil war has not at all run according to plan. During its initial phases, administration officials confidently predicted the quick restoration of Iraqi oil production. But the continuing violence has limited Iraq’s oil production to 60 per cent of what it was before the war. Meanwhile, the world’s demand for oil has escalated, and little new oil is being discovered. Oil prices may fluctuate, but in general the trend has been and will be upward. Because some oil users will be driven by cost to switch to other energy sources, coal and natural gas prices will follow. Our addiction is costly in both dollars and lives, and the cost is increasing.
So finally it has dawned on George Bush that we are addicted, that the addiction is serious and that the solution is not to control the Middle Eastern suppliers of the drug (which has proved impractical anyway) but to come clean and aim for energy independence. This realization is late in coming. Jimmy Carter knew all this in the late 70s. If his advice had been followed, we might have steered clear of two fruitless oil wars.
Many of the rest of us have known it as well. In my 1995 book Down to Earth, I wrote of the first Iraqi war, “The root cause of the Persian Gulf War, and the likely cause of wars to come, is the world’s addiction, and your addiction, and my addiction to oil. I mean that literally. It is an addiction.” A few pages later I added, “In attempting to deal nonviolently with the violence resulting from drug addiction, the first step is to free oneself from dependence on the drug. Nationally, this means a policy of energy independence.”
Yeah, there’s some satisfaction in saying “I told you so.” But not much, and not for long. The hour is late. We have work to do.
John Nolt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he co-chairs the Committee on the Campus Environment, which is developing a 25-year energy plan for UTK.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The Cheney/Bush Oil Strategy
When the Bush administration invaded Iraq last year, it was evident, despite the fear-mongering rhetoric, that the ultimate motive had little to do with Saddam Hussein or terrorism. The notion that Saddam Hussein presented an imminent security threat to the U.S. was even then transparently phony. Though many (including me) believed administration claims that Hussein possessed nerve gas or other such weaponry, still it was evident that Hussein’s use of such weapons against the U.S. would have been suicidal—and Hussein, a secular and self-aggrandizing dictator, had no interest in suicide.
It is by now well established that the Bush administration deliberately exaggerated the security threat and lied about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction and about Hussein’s alleged connection to al-Qaeda. What most Americans do not yet understand is why.
The official reason, of course, is that Hussein had to go. That’s not a bad reason. But it is another diversion, not the truth. The real reason is that the Bush Administration wanted (and still wants) control of Iraqi oil.
Consider our situation. America’s domestic oil production peaked in the 1970s and has been declining ever since. We now import over 60 percent of our oil. Iraq has world’s second largest oil reserves. America’s transportation system and much of its economy runs on oil. The administration has taken no effective action to increase automotive efficiency or stem the drop in gas mileage; fuel economy is at its lowest level in 20 years. Bush and Cheney have extensive personal and financial ties to the oil industry and have repeatedly opposed initiatives for sustainable energy, energy conservation and transportation alternatives. (Bush’s proposal for hydrogen-powered vehicles is a red herring, of dubious technical merit and almost certainly not practically achievable within the next two or three decades.) So how do Bush and Cheney really plan to fuel our economy (and line their pockets) for the remainder of their lifetimes? It’s not too hard to connect the dots.
To this circumstantial evidence we may add the testimony of U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who recently resigned in protest from the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia, which handled intelligence for the Middle East before and during last year’s war. Her revelations about the deliberate distortion of intelligence before and during the war are astonishing (see the February 20-26 issue of LA Weekly). Less astonishing, but more important, is her clear and cogent insider information on the Bush administration’s objectives in Iraq. Here, in her words, are the administration’s objectives: “[they] needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq.” The purpose of the friendly government and the permanent basing is “to secure the energy lines of communication in the region”—in plainer language, to control the flow of oil.
There is another oil-related reason as well. Hussein had started selling Iraq’s oil in euros, not in dollars. Once sanctions were lifted, this would have meant a big boost for the euro as against the dollar. But that problem has already been solved: last May, Bush issued an executive order restoring trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.
Thus the Bush/Cheney oil strategy is clear. The U.S. may restore some sovereignty to the Iraqi people, but there will be strings attached. Among those strings are permanent American military bases in Iraq that can threaten any Iraqi government whose oil policy does not conform to U.S. interests. The fundamental purpose of the invasion was and is control of Iraqi oil. Removal of Saddam Hussein was a beneficial side effect—and a diversion.
Thus does the addict plunder the drug-dealer, supporting and prolonging the addiction.
Not exactly the way to a hopeful future.
It is by now well established that the Bush administration deliberately exaggerated the security threat and lied about the evidence for weapons of mass destruction and about Hussein’s alleged connection to al-Qaeda. What most Americans do not yet understand is why.
The official reason, of course, is that Hussein had to go. That’s not a bad reason. But it is another diversion, not the truth. The real reason is that the Bush Administration wanted (and still wants) control of Iraqi oil.
Consider our situation. America’s domestic oil production peaked in the 1970s and has been declining ever since. We now import over 60 percent of our oil. Iraq has world’s second largest oil reserves. America’s transportation system and much of its economy runs on oil. The administration has taken no effective action to increase automotive efficiency or stem the drop in gas mileage; fuel economy is at its lowest level in 20 years. Bush and Cheney have extensive personal and financial ties to the oil industry and have repeatedly opposed initiatives for sustainable energy, energy conservation and transportation alternatives. (Bush’s proposal for hydrogen-powered vehicles is a red herring, of dubious technical merit and almost certainly not practically achievable within the next two or three decades.) So how do Bush and Cheney really plan to fuel our economy (and line their pockets) for the remainder of their lifetimes? It’s not too hard to connect the dots.
To this circumstantial evidence we may add the testimony of U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who recently resigned in protest from the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia, which handled intelligence for the Middle East before and during last year’s war. Her revelations about the deliberate distortion of intelligence before and during the war are astonishing (see the February 20-26 issue of LA Weekly). Less astonishing, but more important, is her clear and cogent insider information on the Bush administration’s objectives in Iraq. Here, in her words, are the administration’s objectives: “[they] needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq.” The purpose of the friendly government and the permanent basing is “to secure the energy lines of communication in the region”—in plainer language, to control the flow of oil.
There is another oil-related reason as well. Hussein had started selling Iraq’s oil in euros, not in dollars. Once sanctions were lifted, this would have meant a big boost for the euro as against the dollar. But that problem has already been solved: last May, Bush issued an executive order restoring trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.
Thus the Bush/Cheney oil strategy is clear. The U.S. may restore some sovereignty to the Iraqi people, but there will be strings attached. Among those strings are permanent American military bases in Iraq that can threaten any Iraqi government whose oil policy does not conform to U.S. interests. The fundamental purpose of the invasion was and is control of Iraqi oil. Removal of Saddam Hussein was a beneficial side effect—and a diversion.
Thus does the addict plunder the drug-dealer, supporting and prolonging the addiction.
Not exactly the way to a hopeful future.
Oil War III
(This is old. It was a speech I gave right before the war.)
Truth, it is often rightly said, is the first casualty of war. The United States became deeply committed in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which American ships deliberately entered North Vietnamese waters to provoke an attack. The U.S. government lied about this incident, saying that the attack was unprovoked, in order to line up public sentiment in favor of the war.
Now once again truth is becoming a casualty of war. The main reason why George W. Bush wants to attack and hold Iraq is not the alleged military threat from Saddam Hussein, nor any real sympathy for the Iraqi people, but the desire to control Iraqi oil fields. Our domestic supply of crude oil is nearly gone, and we are now entering the end game where nations war over the last oil supplies in the world. A large fraction of the what's left lies deep in the bedrock of Iraq. That's the primary reason for this war—and the probable cause of still more wars yet to come. For this is not the first or even the second time the United States has gone to war over oil. This is Oil War III.
The first oil war began at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attacked in response to a total oil embargo imposed by the Americans, Dutch and British, who at that time controlled international oil production. Hoping to check Japan's push through China, the U.S. and Great Britain cut off Japan's oil supply in August of 1941. Four months later Japan struck back, aiming to destroy the America's Pacific fleet, so as to seize reliable oil supplies in Indonesia. That was Oil War I. We were heroes in that war, drawn in by our efforts to deprive an aggressive power of the oil it needed for conquest.
Twelve years ago the United States entered Oil War II. That war, too, seemed just—at least on the surface: Kuwait was attacked without provocation and we came to its aid. But the United States did not enter the war for altruistic reasons. It was our oil supply that was threatened—and we were defending what we took to be our own interests.
Now we're facing Oil War III. Our addiction to oil is deeper today than it was twelve years ago—so deep that we are now desperate enough to initiate the violence. Today we are the would-be conquerors who aim to seize the Iraqi oil fields and hold them by military occupation. It is true that Saddam Hussein should be disarmed, but that is a job for the international community. He has never attacked us; and it would be suicidal of him to try. It is true that he is a bloody and repressive dictator. But we tolerate and even encourage such dictators elsewhere. Disarmament and liberation are Bush's smokescreens. The primary goal in this war is control of Iraqi oil.
We demand Iraqi oil because we're running out of our own. And we don't think we can do without, because we're addicted. I mean that literally. America is addicted to oil—the black drug. Addictions have four stages: experimentation, the honeymoon, full addiction, and decline. We have recently entered the fourth.
There was, first, the stage of experimentation, which began at the end of the 19th century when we started to use oil to power our automobiles. As with many drugs, there was some initial discomfort. Early cars were noisy and dangerous. They emitted noxious fumes. On winding roads they made some people nauseous. But these were mere annoyances, like the problem of sticking a needle in your vein, and we soon found ways of accommodating ourselves. And the black drug had other uses, too * plastics and pesticides and a million consumer conveniences.
So we entered the honeymoon stage * the rise of the chemical industries, the paving of roads, the building of gas stations, the euphoric romance of speed and style. It felt good to be out there breezing along the highway and the automobile could take us anywhere. Oil, our servant, satisfied our desires.
But beneath our notice those desires turned to needs. Imperceptibly at first, we began to shape our lives and our culture around petroleum-based chemicals and petroleum-powered cars, just as a drug addict shapes his life around the drug. The car changed the landscape of America. Suburbs mushroomed around cities. Communities disappeared, to be replaced by collections of isolated one-family units. Neighborhood stores closed their doors and it became impossible to obtain the simplest necessities without driving somewhere. Asphalt proliferated. It wasn't enough; the centers of cities were choked off as we paved the countryside to create drive-ins and shopping malls. Public transportation was deliberately curtailed or eliminated. The railroads withered.
Oil also fired growth in the chemical and plastics industries; farms adopted arsenals of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Rivers, streams, roadsides and beaches were littered with indestructible plastic.
Like any drug user, we struggled to maintain the illusion of control but now that illusion was beginning to crack. It was hard to hide, even from ourselves, that we were addicted. We had ceased to be masters of oil and had become instead its slaves.
And now we have entered the final stage of addiction, the nightmarish one, where the drug's full destructive effects are unveiled. We're so thoroughly addicted that we can hardly conceive of life without oil. But the black drug is ruining our health. You can smell the sickness in the air of cities. You can hear it in the ceaseless, omnipresent rumble of traffic. You can feel it in the wind, which year by year becomes hotter and more violent. You can see it in the endless streams of poison-spewing vehicles creeping along the highways, in the dying trees of the Appalachian mountains, in the unnatural glow of the nighttime sky.
And so today we stand at the threshold of Oil War III, a war aimed at fueling our addiction. If we win this war (as we certainly will), we lose. For then, like the addict who has made a big score, we will have for a little longer, a cheap and plentiful supply of the drug that is ruining our health.
To addiction there is only one solution. Stop taking the drug. Twenty-five years ago Jimmy Carter tried to set this country on the road to energy independence. We chose oil addiction instead. Now that addiction is leading us to violence—to Oil War III. This war and future wars like it are predictable and inevitable so long as our desperate addiction continues. The way to peace is clear—and it is also the way to health: wean ourselves from the black drug. End our addiction to oil.
Truth, it is often rightly said, is the first casualty of war. The United States became deeply committed in Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which American ships deliberately entered North Vietnamese waters to provoke an attack. The U.S. government lied about this incident, saying that the attack was unprovoked, in order to line up public sentiment in favor of the war.
Now once again truth is becoming a casualty of war. The main reason why George W. Bush wants to attack and hold Iraq is not the alleged military threat from Saddam Hussein, nor any real sympathy for the Iraqi people, but the desire to control Iraqi oil fields. Our domestic supply of crude oil is nearly gone, and we are now entering the end game where nations war over the last oil supplies in the world. A large fraction of the what's left lies deep in the bedrock of Iraq. That's the primary reason for this war—and the probable cause of still more wars yet to come. For this is not the first or even the second time the United States has gone to war over oil. This is Oil War III.
The first oil war began at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attacked in response to a total oil embargo imposed by the Americans, Dutch and British, who at that time controlled international oil production. Hoping to check Japan's push through China, the U.S. and Great Britain cut off Japan's oil supply in August of 1941. Four months later Japan struck back, aiming to destroy the America's Pacific fleet, so as to seize reliable oil supplies in Indonesia. That was Oil War I. We were heroes in that war, drawn in by our efforts to deprive an aggressive power of the oil it needed for conquest.
Twelve years ago the United States entered Oil War II. That war, too, seemed just—at least on the surface: Kuwait was attacked without provocation and we came to its aid. But the United States did not enter the war for altruistic reasons. It was our oil supply that was threatened—and we were defending what we took to be our own interests.
Now we're facing Oil War III. Our addiction to oil is deeper today than it was twelve years ago—so deep that we are now desperate enough to initiate the violence. Today we are the would-be conquerors who aim to seize the Iraqi oil fields and hold them by military occupation. It is true that Saddam Hussein should be disarmed, but that is a job for the international community. He has never attacked us; and it would be suicidal of him to try. It is true that he is a bloody and repressive dictator. But we tolerate and even encourage such dictators elsewhere. Disarmament and liberation are Bush's smokescreens. The primary goal in this war is control of Iraqi oil.
We demand Iraqi oil because we're running out of our own. And we don't think we can do without, because we're addicted. I mean that literally. America is addicted to oil—the black drug. Addictions have four stages: experimentation, the honeymoon, full addiction, and decline. We have recently entered the fourth.
There was, first, the stage of experimentation, which began at the end of the 19th century when we started to use oil to power our automobiles. As with many drugs, there was some initial discomfort. Early cars were noisy and dangerous. They emitted noxious fumes. On winding roads they made some people nauseous. But these were mere annoyances, like the problem of sticking a needle in your vein, and we soon found ways of accommodating ourselves. And the black drug had other uses, too * plastics and pesticides and a million consumer conveniences.
So we entered the honeymoon stage * the rise of the chemical industries, the paving of roads, the building of gas stations, the euphoric romance of speed and style. It felt good to be out there breezing along the highway and the automobile could take us anywhere. Oil, our servant, satisfied our desires.
But beneath our notice those desires turned to needs. Imperceptibly at first, we began to shape our lives and our culture around petroleum-based chemicals and petroleum-powered cars, just as a drug addict shapes his life around the drug. The car changed the landscape of America. Suburbs mushroomed around cities. Communities disappeared, to be replaced by collections of isolated one-family units. Neighborhood stores closed their doors and it became impossible to obtain the simplest necessities without driving somewhere. Asphalt proliferated. It wasn't enough; the centers of cities were choked off as we paved the countryside to create drive-ins and shopping malls. Public transportation was deliberately curtailed or eliminated. The railroads withered.
Oil also fired growth in the chemical and plastics industries; farms adopted arsenals of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Rivers, streams, roadsides and beaches were littered with indestructible plastic.
Like any drug user, we struggled to maintain the illusion of control but now that illusion was beginning to crack. It was hard to hide, even from ourselves, that we were addicted. We had ceased to be masters of oil and had become instead its slaves.
And now we have entered the final stage of addiction, the nightmarish one, where the drug's full destructive effects are unveiled. We're so thoroughly addicted that we can hardly conceive of life without oil. But the black drug is ruining our health. You can smell the sickness in the air of cities. You can hear it in the ceaseless, omnipresent rumble of traffic. You can feel it in the wind, which year by year becomes hotter and more violent. You can see it in the endless streams of poison-spewing vehicles creeping along the highways, in the dying trees of the Appalachian mountains, in the unnatural glow of the nighttime sky.
And so today we stand at the threshold of Oil War III, a war aimed at fueling our addiction. If we win this war (as we certainly will), we lose. For then, like the addict who has made a big score, we will have for a little longer, a cheap and plentiful supply of the drug that is ruining our health.
To addiction there is only one solution. Stop taking the drug. Twenty-five years ago Jimmy Carter tried to set this country on the road to energy independence. We chose oil addiction instead. Now that addiction is leading us to violence—to Oil War III. This war and future wars like it are predictable and inevitable so long as our desperate addiction continues. The way to peace is clear—and it is also the way to health: wean ourselves from the black drug. End our addiction to oil.
An Environmental Fahrenheit 9/11
My overwhelming reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11 was relief. Not that the content of the film isn’t chilling, infuriating, outrageous and tragic. It is, and some of it breaks your heart. But afterward, as I walked away from the theater, I felt an upwelling of hope that finally, FINALLY something was possible that had been missing from America since 9/11—honest, informed, open debate about the merits of U.S. foreign policy.
Public officials, Republican and Democratic alike, have since 9/11 been cowered into postures of patriotic support for a war whose public justification was thoroughly false (the conspiring “Axis of Evil,” the imminent threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s involvement in 9/11) and whose execution, was a money trough for Haliburton and a grim tragedy for both America and Iraq. With Americans flocking to the theaters to see what the media and public officials have failed see—or at least failed to acknowledge—it is possible at last to ask critical questions, to think publicly and to get the democratic process rolling again.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a blistering exposé of how the cynicism, corruption and ineptitude of the Bush administration sparked the tragedies of the Iraq war. But this same cynicism, corruption and ineptitude have sparked other tragedies as well. There is need, I think for a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 that exposes the Bush administration’s stealth war on the environment. There is so much the public does not yet know!
The two wars are, of course, connected. It is hardly a coincidence that Bush chose to attack the country with the second largest oil reserves in the world. (Saudi Arabia, the country with largest oil reserves, was already deeply tied to the oil-rich Bush family, as Fahrenheit 9/11 documents.) Removing Saddam was one objective, but also a convenient excuse. The long-term objective (revealed by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who resigned in protest from the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia) is permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. And the reason for the bases, of course, is oil.
Imagine Michael Moore telling that story, cutting from the Iraqi oil fields to a meeting of Bush administration energy officials (many with close ties to the oil industry) who are celebrating the fact that an increasing population of Americans is driving more miles each year in lower-mileage vehicles. Let Moore show us an aging coal-fired power plant (maybe a TVA facility) and explain that the Bush administration has exempted it from key provisions of the Clean Air Act. Imagine the shot fading from there to the smoggy air of an American city (say, Knoxville) or a national park (say, the Smokies) and finally to a child coughing her lungs out with asthma.
And, on the subject of coal and oil, picture a clip of George Bush shaking hands with Enron CEO Ken Lay, the man he called “Kenny Boy,” who was one of the top funders of his 2000 campaign, and whose company may well have precipitated (in addition to the largest accounting scandals in history) California’s 2001 energy crisis. Then imagine the obtrusive Michael Moore asking Dick Cheney whether Enron or other energy corporations had undue influence on the administration’s energy policy (Cheney ducks away with a scowl and muttered obscenity). And follow that up with a droll review of the court battles Cheney has been fighting to keep the deliberations of his notorious Energy Task Force secret. “Here we have Cheney,” Moore might say, “invoking executive immunity to hide public policy-making from the American public.”
Let us see Bush abrogating the Kyoto Accord, the historic international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and slow the pace of global climate change. And let us hear what administration officials have to say for themselves after censoring EPA reports on global climate change, to make it appear that the damage is less severe than it is.
Show us the deliberations leading to this year’s proposed $600 million shortfall in funding for national parks, along with the administration’s memos to park superintendents instructing them not to call these cuts “cuts.” (They are in the administration’s Orwellian lingo “service level adjustments.")
Show us the intensified logging in national forests, the corporate giveaways, the gridlock on listing of endangered species, the repeated attempts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, the 40 percent drop in ERA enforcement actions, the survey results indicating that more than half of EPA’s employees fear job retaliation for reporting improper activity, the so-called “farm subsidies” to corporations like Cargill and J. G. Boswell, the military’s blanket exemptions from environmental law, the hundreds of administrative efforts circumvent environmental law and evade public scrutiny …
It could be a very long film.
One of the most powerful features of Fahrenheit 9/11 would, however, be difficult to duplicate. Moore was able to portray the pain, grief and agony that now afflict Americans and Iraqis alike. But the losses in Bush’s war on the environment are longer-term. People are being harmed now, but the worst effects will not show up for decades or centuries. The pain, grief and agony will fall mainly on future generations, who, being yet unborn, are difficult to capture on film.
Public officials, Republican and Democratic alike, have since 9/11 been cowered into postures of patriotic support for a war whose public justification was thoroughly false (the conspiring “Axis of Evil,” the imminent threat of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s involvement in 9/11) and whose execution, was a money trough for Haliburton and a grim tragedy for both America and Iraq. With Americans flocking to the theaters to see what the media and public officials have failed see—or at least failed to acknowledge—it is possible at last to ask critical questions, to think publicly and to get the democratic process rolling again.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a blistering exposé of how the cynicism, corruption and ineptitude of the Bush administration sparked the tragedies of the Iraq war. But this same cynicism, corruption and ineptitude have sparked other tragedies as well. There is need, I think for a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 that exposes the Bush administration’s stealth war on the environment. There is so much the public does not yet know!
The two wars are, of course, connected. It is hardly a coincidence that Bush chose to attack the country with the second largest oil reserves in the world. (Saudi Arabia, the country with largest oil reserves, was already deeply tied to the oil-rich Bush family, as Fahrenheit 9/11 documents.) Removing Saddam was one objective, but also a convenient excuse. The long-term objective (revealed by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who resigned in protest from the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia) is permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. And the reason for the bases, of course, is oil.
Imagine Michael Moore telling that story, cutting from the Iraqi oil fields to a meeting of Bush administration energy officials (many with close ties to the oil industry) who are celebrating the fact that an increasing population of Americans is driving more miles each year in lower-mileage vehicles. Let Moore show us an aging coal-fired power plant (maybe a TVA facility) and explain that the Bush administration has exempted it from key provisions of the Clean Air Act. Imagine the shot fading from there to the smoggy air of an American city (say, Knoxville) or a national park (say, the Smokies) and finally to a child coughing her lungs out with asthma.
And, on the subject of coal and oil, picture a clip of George Bush shaking hands with Enron CEO Ken Lay, the man he called “Kenny Boy,” who was one of the top funders of his 2000 campaign, and whose company may well have precipitated (in addition to the largest accounting scandals in history) California’s 2001 energy crisis. Then imagine the obtrusive Michael Moore asking Dick Cheney whether Enron or other energy corporations had undue influence on the administration’s energy policy (Cheney ducks away with a scowl and muttered obscenity). And follow that up with a droll review of the court battles Cheney has been fighting to keep the deliberations of his notorious Energy Task Force secret. “Here we have Cheney,” Moore might say, “invoking executive immunity to hide public policy-making from the American public.”
Let us see Bush abrogating the Kyoto Accord, the historic international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and slow the pace of global climate change. And let us hear what administration officials have to say for themselves after censoring EPA reports on global climate change, to make it appear that the damage is less severe than it is.
Show us the deliberations leading to this year’s proposed $600 million shortfall in funding for national parks, along with the administration’s memos to park superintendents instructing them not to call these cuts “cuts.” (They are in the administration’s Orwellian lingo “service level adjustments.")
Show us the intensified logging in national forests, the corporate giveaways, the gridlock on listing of endangered species, the repeated attempts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, the 40 percent drop in ERA enforcement actions, the survey results indicating that more than half of EPA’s employees fear job retaliation for reporting improper activity, the so-called “farm subsidies” to corporations like Cargill and J. G. Boswell, the military’s blanket exemptions from environmental law, the hundreds of administrative efforts circumvent environmental law and evade public scrutiny …
It could be a very long film.
One of the most powerful features of Fahrenheit 9/11 would, however, be difficult to duplicate. Moore was able to portray the pain, grief and agony that now afflict Americans and Iraqis alike. But the losses in Bush’s war on the environment are longer-term. People are being harmed now, but the worst effects will not show up for decades or centuries. The pain, grief and agony will fall mainly on future generations, who, being yet unborn, are difficult to capture on film.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
