Commentary
Perspectives on our changing climate -- Part 2: True costs of fossil fuels
By Rand Clifford
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Apr 5, 2007, 02:00

U.S. News and World Report Senior writer Michael Barone recently returned from Venus, where runaway greenhouse effect from an atmosphere that’s mostly carbon dioxide keeps surface temperatures averaging about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (Ryabov, 2000).

Venusian religious leaders and politicians are sweating out final details of an Official Proclamation questioning the effects of carbon dioxide on climate. They still have a lot of work to do before issuing an Official Assessment of Blame, which is why Barone hurried back to Earth for a running start on blaming Al Gore for our own climate dilemma. Seems Gore has been twisting science, and history (2007).

Of course things are warming, concedes Barone -- but that’s just how the planet works. Change has always been the name of the game. And while climatologists concur that our runaway carbon emissions are to blame for current unprecedented warming, Barone insists that “scientists” are confused about what is natural warming, and what is caused by human activity.

Stepping up the heat, Barone likens Gore to an Old Testament prophet ranting that we gotta quit sinning, that scientists with views diverging from his own oughta be squished, and that scientific inquiry must be replaced with faith. Prophet Gore wants to stop economic growth, thereby consigning millions in the developing world to miserable poverty. But Gore’s most vile transgression is that he is a pampered and much-praised baby boomer so infatuated with himself that all “past history” is irrelevant. Mr. Barone, I’m not sure what other kinds of history there are . . . but anyway, such transgression is where they drew the line on Venus. You have returned just in time.

Writers paid handsomely for smug and smarmy screeds about how what is happening is kinda like, sort of like, not really happening -- paid to wrap tight in stars and stripes and cherry-picked “science” and pontificate about things scientific while having no clue about what science actually is, inciting flocks of subordinate parrots to propagate puerile nonsense; having to endure such wastage of editorial space better used to convey substance and meaning, that’s probably the cheapest hidden cost of oil. More wretched than some of the other costs, perhaps, or at least more annoying; then at the other end of the costs spectrum, the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Those same writers parroted: Weapons of Mass Destruction! Mushroom clouds! Saddam Hussein -- if we don’t take him out he’ll be all over us with more 9-11s -- and Even Worse! Well, their old nemesis, Reality, deflated that approach, so we inflated with such nobility as to be willing to make whatever sacrifices, pay whatever costs involved in bestowing freedom and democracy upon the good people of Iraq. We were in it for the Iraqis! Operation Iraqi Liberation, O.I.L. -- OOPS! That pesky truth tries to wriggle out every time we let our propaganda slip. O.E.F., now that sounds much better, Operation Enduring Freedom. And that endured as our “mission” for quite a while, until congressional Democrats with their current majority started puffing warm air about pseudo timetables for quasi troop withdrawals.

So once again, we have a new “mission,” as George W. Bush revealed in his recent address to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, 90 percent of whose political contributions go to Republican candidates. The Decider mooed: “If we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here” (Bush, 2007). That’s why parrots are suddenly parroting a steady stream of “If we don’t git ‘em there, they’ll come and git us here!”

Still, no matter how it’s hidden, that pesky truth of why we invaded and occupy Iraq won’t go away: We simply MUST control their oil. That’s why our mission continues to be so variously spelled out, why our government is yet to officially describe exactly what Victory in Iraq IS. Why don’t we admit to being simple imperial plunderers, since most of the world and certainly the Iraqis clearly see the truth?

Dick Cheney revealed the goal of the war in a speech while still the CEO of Halliburton in 1999. To his own question of “Where is the oil going to come from to slake the world’s ever-growing thirst,” Cheney answered, “The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.” The “Cheney Energy Task Force” had all eyes firmly fixed on The Prize back at the beginning of 2001. Along with Ken Lay of Enron and a cadre of Oilmen, they knew the only way to start describing victory was “Iraqi Oil Secured”; a main reason the White House has appealed clear to Cheney’s duck hunting buddy on the Supreme Court to keep all aspects of the meeting secret.

When Bush handed the keys of American Foreign Policy to Cheney and his neocons, The Prize had long been darling of their quest for “full spectrum” domination of world affairs, a.k.a., “Global Hegemony.” Those billions of barrels, cheapest oil on the planet to extract, new reserves still being discovered . . . there is no limit to the spending of other peoples’ money, or sacrifice of other peoples’ lives, to get The Prize. And no limit to the lies.

For anyone unsure about the invader’s concern for the Iraqi people, two words are ultimately clarifying: depleted uranium (DU). Our Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU, a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Disposing of DU on the battlefield sure is cheaper than disposing of it as radioactive waste. Hardness and density make DU the premier armor-piercing projectile; radioactivity, and half-life of 4.5 billion years make DU munitions the ultimate “dirty bombs.” Future costs to Iraqis in cancers and birth defects are incalculable, same for the costs of the massive contamination of our own troops (Saddam GASSED HIS OWN PEOPLE! We DU ours . . . ).

Three hundred-fifty tons of DU were fired in the first Gulf War. An additional 1,800 tons have been used since the 2003 invasion. The Bush administration likes to talk about the blood-thirsty, maniacal indifference to the sanctity of human life shown by Iraqis, but could there be any greater example of this brand of evil than our use of DU munitions not only in Iraq, but Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico and elsewhere? They also belabor the idea that Iraqis have not shown proper gratitude for all we have done for them. I’m unsure what the protocols of etiquette dictate regarding gratitude for being invaded, occupied, having hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered, and having your land, air, water and gene pool radioactively contaminated for perpetuity -- all simply to steal your resources. But I do know that Americans would surely run similar gratitude deficits if Iraq invaded America to steal our resources, and subjected us to such unending horrors as meted out in Bush’s war for oil.

Actual extent of Big Oil’s influence over American politics is hard to fathom since they control mainstream media. They cast our oil war as a crusade of good against evil. They conjure our murder of Iraqis into noble efforts to bring them freedom. Climate Change becomes a personal crusade of a fat, pampered rich boy bent on getting elected president (Reality = again), while earning disdain of “scientists” by getting some numbers wrong (inches of sea level rise; degrees of temperature increase; ocean salinity quotients . . . ). They sail through Congress bills for vast corporate welfare even while posting the most obscene profits in history. And with the White House . . . they ARE the White House. Their astronomical influence enables Big Oil to conceal the astronomical True Costs of oil, lets them keep it from being reflected At The Pump, costs such as the majority of Climate Change. Costs of vast and comprehensive pollution from extraction, transportation, refining and distribution that globally add up to the equivalent of another Exxon Valdez every few weeks, or worse.

Meanwhile, such concentration of power in a single industry pushes remains of our constitutional Republic ever deeper into fascism. Intertwine that with an Industrial Military Complex sucking up over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money every year, and that gets us to oil wars, and from Iraq to Iran. Imagine the costs of keeping two entire aircraft-carrier battle fleets prowling the Persian Gulf on alert, fishing for another “Gulf of Tonkin.”

So when we pump that $3-a-gallon (Bitch! & Moan!) gasoline into our tanks, we should keep in mind that gasoline is in reality the most expensive fuel imaginable -- the most heavily-subsidized commodity in history. We certainly are paying those subsidies with our tax dollars, regardless of how well they are cloaked. A trillion dollars so far in Iraq to murder hundreds of thousands of people that have never harmed nor threatened us. We’re paying the costs of Climate Change, which, unless oil wars lead to global nuclear war, will kill like wars never have. We’re paying for all the pollution. Even future generations are paying dearly for our consumption. Then we get into costs more difficult to quantify . . . such as the death of over 3,000 of our own soldiers, along with the deep and wide stream of gravely wounded. How can a price tag be put on a million Iraqi lives? Never-ending effects of DU? Worldwide crash of esteem for America . . . ? Costs of oil subsidies are virtually limitless, and you and me and all others like us are paying them, right now. Oil subsidies are simply political subterfuge to get American taxpayers to pay the true costs of the world’s most expensive energy so oil folks can stay the world’s wealthiest people. The pure essence of shame . . . when it comes to alternative energies, it boils down to reducing the profits of an industry that exerts control over most everything in our lives -- so until Big Oil can spread their control over new energy sources, those sources are just going to have to remain “economically unfeasible.”

Since we already have the technologies to achieve energy independence, how can we tell people who have lost loved ones in Iraq that alternative fuels are not cost-effective? Imagine if biomass ethanol were subsidized with just the monetary costs of the Iraqi invasion and occupation, how competitive it would be. Fossil fuels could quickly become what they should’ve been wars ago: bad memories.

References:

Barone, Michael. Gore twists science, history. Creators Syndicate, March 27, 2007

Bush, George (2007), Bush delivers remarks to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Washington Post (March 28, 2007).

Ryabov, George (2000). Temperature on the Surface of Venus

In Part 3: Who wins and who loses if we transcend fossils and start living within our current energy systems?

Part 1: Weather versus climate

Part 3: Peace, Clean Energy, and Prioritie