America’s Birthday Gift to the Sheiks

This week was the 50th anniversary of OPEC. Thanks to the United States Congress, overseas petro potentates have had plenty to celebrate.

September 14 was the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ 50th anniversary.

OPEC has plenty to celebrate on its golden jubilee, thanks to the United States Congress.

The first slice of the anniversary cake goes to Harry Reid, who played the delicate politics of energy and climate this year like a cement-handed shortstop on a bush league ball team from Palookaville. Reid’s clumsiness exploded the best shot the Senate had of passing a bipartisan compromise putting a price on carbon, an indispensable step for easing the U.S. off the oil addiction treadmill.

The next few slices go to Republican electeds and their talk radio peanut galleries, who have boiled down energy policy into a vacuous three-word slogan that betrays a breathtaking unwillingness to face up to geological and geopolitical facts.

Politicians and talk radio carnival barkers chanting “drill, baby, drill” like a gaggle of zombies from a ‘50s B movie aren’t doing anything to check America’s 25 percent share of global oil consumption or increasing America’s 3 percent share of global oil reserves.

All they’re doing is bringing smiles to the faces of overseas petro potentates. The autocrats who are projected to control more than half of world oil production by 2030 would like nothing better than for America to stay hooked on the sauce so that our dwindling reserves and heavy appetite forces us to belly up more often to the OPEC bar.

Republican pols have paid lip service to diversifying the nation’s energy portfolio with “all-of-the-above” slogans, but their proposals are little better than a drunk’s declaration that he can quit his addiction anytime he wants.

If only today’s politicians on both sides of the aisle would listen to an elder statesman like George Shultz, who held three Cabinet posts for Presidents Reagan and Nixon. Back in 1969, Shultz recalled in a recent interview with the Ventura County, California Star, he was chairman of a Nixon administration task force looking into oil imports when he learned about a quota that President Eisenhower had put in place.

Ike believed that if oil imports made up more than 20 percent of America’s oil supply, “we were asking for trouble,” Shultz recalled.

In Eisenhower’s day, the U.S. dominated global oil production. Today, the U.S. is nearly 40 years past its production peak.

By 2030, the International Energy Agency tells us, members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development club of industrialized countries will spend 2 percent of their GDP on oil and gas imports. By then, a greater share of the world’s conventional oil reserves are expected to be in the hands of Russia and OPEC, none of which will ever win a prize for friendliness to U.S. interests.

Ten administrations after Eisenhower left the White House, Shultz said it’s time “to get control over our use of energy, the way we produce it and the way we use it” by setting clear policies to cut the carbon-rich portions from our energy diet and speed development of more secure energy alternatives.

We can listen to Shultz. Or, we can listen to Sarah Palin et. al. and give OPEC even more reason to celebrate when its diamond anniversary rolls around.