Energy Policy
A couple Sundays ago, Thomas Friedman, op-ed columnist for the New York Times who focuses on Middle East issues, wrote a column about being a geo-green. I was curious about this term, having never heard it before. After doing a bit of Googling™, it was obvious that Friedman had just coined this phrase, but unfortunately he hadn't really embellished on it or fully explained it. This week, he's back with a bit more to say about what it means to be a geo-green:

As a geo-green, I believe that combining environmentalism and geopolitics is the most moral and realistic strategy the U.S. could pursue today.

OK, so that's not a whole lot. But it's part of a larger point about how U.S. energy policy (or lack thereof) is becoming a double-edged sword, one that is certainly not doing much in the way of improving environmental/climate standards and, because of it's short-sighted hunger for all-things oil, is handing wads of cash over to the Middle Eastern regimes that the Bush/Cheney neocon mafia would like to take down. (Don't forget, Iran isn't the only target--we've also got Saudi Arabia in our sights, but via less of a militaristic option).

By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush team is - as others have noted - financing both sides of the war on terrorism. We are financing the U.S. armed forces with our tax dollars, and, through our profligate use of energy, we are generating huge windfall profits for Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, where the cash is used to insulate the regimes from any pressure to open up their economies, liberate their women or modernize their schools, and where it ends up instead financing madrassas, mosques and militants fundamentally opposed to the progressive, pluralistic agenda America is trying to promote. Now how smart is that?

What's a geo-green to do?

Imagine if President Bush used his bully pulpit and political capital to focus the nation on sharply lowering energy consumption and embracing a gasoline tax.

What would that buy? It would buy reform in some of the worst regimes in the world, from Tehran to Moscow. It would reduce the chances that the U.S. and China are going to have a global struggle over oil - which is where we are heading. It would help us to strengthen the dollar and reduce the current account deficit by importing less crude. It would reduce climate change more than anything in Kyoto. It would significantly improve America's standing in the world by making us good global citizens. It would shrink the budget deficit. It would reduce our dependence on the Saudis so we could tell them the truth. (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) And it would pull China away from its drift into supporting some of the worst governments in the world, like Sudan's, because it needs their oil. Most important, making energy independence our generation's moon shot could help inspire more young people to go into science and engineering, which we desperately need.
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But no, President Bush has a better project: borrowing another trillion dollars, which will make us that much more dependent on countries like China and Saudi Arabia that hold our debt - so that you might, if you do everything right and live long enough, get a few more bucks out of your Social Security account.

The president's priorities are totally nuts.

Amen, my brother geo-green. Oh, by the by, 2005 could be the warmest year yet on record, according to Nasa (via CNN):

A weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, NASA scientists said this week.

While climate events like El Nino -- when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean --affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part.

"There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, based in New York.

The warmest year on record was 1998, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third, respectively.
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Carbon dioxide, emitted by autos, industry and utilities, is the most common greenhouse gas. Hansen also said that the Earth's surface now absorbs more of the sun's energy than gets reflected back to space.