Thursday, February 02, 2006

Addiction To Oil

This is a theme I'm going to return to a couple of times over the next few days because it's important and well, it's damned funny.

Go read this post at Martini Republic first.

Alex, excellent points: alternative energy programs that do not involve fossil fuels are the only way we're going to take the tyranny of the oil hegemonists out of play.

Tom Friedman (give him a little credit on this one) was on the Today Show today and made an excellent point: you're never going to have democracy in countries where oil is the economy. The sheiks, emirs, kings and dictators don't need to rely on their populace for tax revenues or economic growth. They just need to tap another reserve and hell with the leftovers, can buy loyalty from the people.

This makes them wholly unaccountable to the people, and in fact makes them a bigger problem in the world overall than they need to be.

Bush can give credits for hybrid cars all he wants: all he's doing is making gas and oil cheaper for China and India (and thus making them even more competitive with our economy). We need to rethink energy completely.

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