Hu Hears A Horton

The U.S.- China energy dance
Countries should cooperate over oil

April 25, 2006

As summits go, the one between President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao last week was a subdued and seemingly unproductive affair, aside from some minor concessions by China on the protection of intellectual property rights.

But of keen interest to Americans who see gasoline prices rising daily, Bush suggested to Hu that China expand its nuclear power to generate electricity. It was a pointed allusion to China's growing thirst for oil to keep its economy pumping out the exports that have flooded the American market.

So, Mr. Bush, why does it have to be China that has to risk its citizens for our benefit?

[China] now has some 60 percent of Sudan's oil flowing its way, has signed a $78-billion oil contract with Iran and is negotiating with other oil-producing nations for similar deals. After his summit with Bush, Hu also met with Saudi Arabia's leaders, who said oil cooperation with China is on track.

Starting to see the picture here, folks? Why it has to be China that moves towards nuclear power? Hu is directly picking Bush-and-Cheney's pocket, and it's pissing them off.

If the United States-- Republicans in particular-- hadn't been so short-sighted about energy when there was a chance to nip this problem in the bud, we wouldn't be in Iraq. We wouldn't be in Afghanistan. We wouldn't have half the Muslim world mad at us, and we wouldn't be lurching towards war with China.

The was all avoidable. Flat out avoidable. The strides we've made in the past ten years would have been made thirty years ago, and likely today, we'd have a totally Middle East-independent energy policy, with local distributed energy networks supplying most of us with all the power we need, and then some.

Think about it. The August 2003 blackout would have been a localized affair, limited to that small section of the Great Lakes region where the breakdown occured, as opposed to affecting, well, basically the world. Energy prices would not only be stable, but also lower, as each individual region would determine the best, most effective way to provide its residents with power and use that, whether it be wind, solar, oil & gas, coal, or nuclear. There would be no artificial means of enriching the pockets of petroleum producers by forcing communities to slave for oil. The Federal government could have funded alternative energy programs, and probably have received a wealth dividend in return (low cost loans whose repayments would be tied to the level of production, which in turn could be run as quasi-private industry, with no profit limitation, but a definite price ceiling).

And yet we're lecturing China to build nuke plants that are costly as all hell...we could have been spending all this time and money working on improving nuclear efficiency and more important, safety, instead of depleting our Cold War peace dividend on new weapons systems for outdated warfare.

Shameful.

snarkasm, snarcasm, snarky

Bush
Cheney
Iraq
Iran
China
OPEC
China Hat Tip To Miss C for letting me crib a photo from her blog. Again.