The position taken by Prince al-Faisal proves that the Saudi, not unlike the French generals of World War I, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Thirty plus years ago, the Saudis were the parade marshals for two rounds of oil embargo directed against the US.
The first one caught us unaware and not motivated to be either flexible or inventive. We groused, spent forever in lines, underwent rationing, bit down and paid more--a lot more.
The second big Saudi blockade had a different result. That time around We the People, our enterprises, our inventiveness had a positive and very real effect. The upshot was a major trajectory of energy efficiency in all areas: industry, private residences, transportation. Our conservation efforts paid off handsomely, even though the government funded efforts to make oil shale and tar sands competitive came a cropper.
Indeed, as the Japanese found out in the Eighties, challenging the US, knocking the American eagle off his perch so that his beak sticks in the eagle dreck on the bottom of the cage, doing a Japan, Inc endzone dance could and did prove quite counterproductive. The decade of Ronald Reagan was also the decade of "rightsizing," of making business of all sorts more efficient, more effective. The human costs were high, both in the near and long term, but the end results put paid to the notions offered by all too many pessimists that the day of the US was done and the new age of Japan, Inc was upon the world.
Prince al-Faisal has flipped us, each and everyone of We the People, a big, royal bird. He has said rather bluntly that we lack the will both political and individual as well as the capacity to find a replacement for Saudi oil--so we had better be damn nice to the reactionary Islamists who rule the land of the shrines.
Of course the US cannot curtail its use of oil greatly in the short-term. Oil and other fossil fuels must be seen as necessary bridges on the way to developing energy systems which are not based on these prime movers. But, Prince al-Faisal had best take note of such realities as the newly proved three giga-barrel field on the Mexican continental shelf.
He might also contemplate the possibility that the political winds in the US might shift suddenly so that the self-imposed restrictions on exploiting the potential reserves on the American continental shelf or the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve will be removed. The short-sighted purveyor of insults directed at us might also consider that the oil shale and tar sands still exist and the technology abandoned thirty years ago has remained under development so that the cost-price considerations which were negative then are not so now.
The princeling turned pundit might stop pontificating on what the American public will and will not, can and cannot do long enough to read some US history. If he could get off his high camel long enough to do this he would discover quickly that We the People are both ready and willing to bear sacrifice--if the cause be good, and the results clearly foreseeable.
While we are making recommendations, it is reasonable to make the same suggestion to the Nice Young Man From Chicago and the entire global warming crew behind the current energy and carbon limitation legislation. Now, to paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth, "You who have two good eyes, better read."
President Obama, the Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party, Prince al-Faisal just like President Jimmy Carter thirty years ago have missed a critical point in the nature and character of the American people which is quite self-evident in our history. All of these worthies have underestimated both the will and ability of individual Americans working collectively in mutual self-interest.
Back in the cardigan sweater before the fireplace days of the Man From Plains, we were implored to "think small," to be happy with less, to accept a diminished state and quality of life. President Carter, showing his engineer's training and preacher's orientation, earnestly pitched his energy policy in terms of doing with less, living closer to the bone, aspiring not to great dreams but small ones. He did not challenge us to think our way to a new approach to energy prime movers, to the equivalent of the manned space program in developing new technologies, new methods, new and great industries with the potentials (and risks) these would entail. He did not call upon our best aspects, but rather on our least.
As a result which was drearily predictable We the People met President Carter's sermons with a collective yawn and a complete unwillingness to go beyond the purely symbolic. We trusted that somehow, someway, things would get better with time.
They did. Even with the combination of Federal expenditure and corporate short-term thinking and the failures it produced, things did get better. In fits and starts, in bits and pieces, the energy "crisis" resolved itself.
Now the anthropogenic climate change fanatics and their political enablers including President Obama baying in the van seem hell bent on not only repeating the errors of the Carter years, but expanding upon them in the interests of an agenda of enhanced public space and the necessary concomitant, decreased private space. Like President Carter they sell fear, limitations, and decreased aspirations for the future. All are predicated upon a total lack of faith in the capacities of We the People.
Changing the profile of energy prime movers as well as enhancing the efficiency with which energy in all its forms is used will require sacrifice. By all of us. The degree and dollar amount of the necessary sacrifice cannot be determined with either accuracy or honesty. Suffice it to posit that the collective sacrifice in mode of living (and costs) will not be negligible.
To motivate us, the Nice Young Man From Chicago and his merry crew of doomsayers, must call upon our best aspects, our highest motivations--and a sense of collective outrage. It is absolutely essential that the need for energy prime mover change be pitched not in terms of global warming (or to use the new, politically correct formula, global climate change) but rather to cut the US free from the reactionary, Islamist, hostile governments such as that in Saudi Arabia.
Global climate change, even if it is a reality rather than the positing of a collection of physicists, pundits, and politicians pursuing an arcane agenda, is simply too hazy, too vapid, too distant a prospect to inspire, motivate, and focus the effort and will of the American public. It is too much of an artifact, a construct of debatable merit, to serve as the platform for shared sacrifice of an unknown amount and duration.
Prince al-Faisal's insulting declaration that there is no way, no way at all, no new ideas, no new technologies, no political base for cutting the US free from the Lords of the Sand and Oil puts the matter in a sharp, exploitable focus. The Prince has said, in essence, that the Saudi Oil Dog can and will continue to wag the American tail.
Implicitly, the prince is stating that the US must follow Saudi and the Saudi dominated oil sheikdoms in its foreign policy. He is saying in clear terms that the Arab hand on the oil valve waves the whip over Uncle Sam's back. By his reasoning, the US is enslaved to Arab oil and as a necessary result is at the command of the Arab master.
The concept of slavery, enslavement, and the relation between slave and master is endemic to Islam. It is endemic to the Arab worldview. It is a powerful reality not a mere metaphor in the mind of people such as Turki al-Faisal.
Turki al-Faisal is also taking a position of an intensely nationalistic sort. While President Obama and many in his administration along with the majority of the elites in Western Europe and the US believe that we are living in some sort of post-nationalist world, the overwhelming preponderance of governments, elites, and people around the globe think otherwise. To most of the many states and billions living today, the interests of the nation trump some sort of vague idea of "humanity," or the "international community" or the bumper sticker thinking of "we are all passengers on spaceship Earth."
As a consequence, if the US Congress, the Obama administration really, really want to reconfigure the American energy prime mover mix, it is utterly essential that it be recast in terms of definite American national interest. The arrogant Saudi prince and prophet must be the poster boy for the campaign to change the profile of our energy prime movers.
For years, decades really, the US has lost its ability to operate freely in the world. Treasure notes to China and petrodollars to the Arab states take with them a measurable degree of American autonomy in world affairs. Recently the Chinese have been hinting strongly about how many indebted US dollars they hold. Now Turki al-Faisal has all but written that We the People are his slaves.
Push has come to shove. Now is the time to put matters clearly and honestly. The US must claim its freedom. Energy independence must be more than a political slogan. It must be the reality. And, if a lower "carbon footprint"comes in the bargain, well, nothing wrong with that.
The only real question is whether or not President Obama and his fellow "progressives" have the will, wit, and guts to call reality by its right name. And, act upon it. Decisively and effectively. The will, wit, and guts to call upon the best of We the People and not play to vague, faint fears.
Well, that is an unknown. If the Geek were a betting sort of guy.... Well, he ain't.
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