Don’t hate Carter for being right

I have seen a lot of vitriol directed at former President Jimmy Carter on various blogs today in response to his editorial in today’s Washington Post about the violence in the Middle East. The hatred seemed to focus mostly on his perceived ineffectiveness as a leader.

What people seem to forget is that, had we listened to Carter, we would not be where we are today. He was right all along.

How was he right? One word: energy.

All of our problems in the Middle East can be traced back to our insatiable thirst for oil. We liberated Kuwait from Iraq and set the stage for today’s Iraq mess, not because we particularly cared about the Kuwaitis, but because of their oil (anyone who says otherwise must explain why we don’t intercede in other invasions, oppressions, and genocides when they occur on lands that are not of “strategic importance”.) We dread leaving Iraq in its current sorry state because we fear the impact on Iraq’s substantial reserves of petroleum. We are hated by the Middle East because they think we are robbing them of their precious resource at bargain prices in order to feed our voracious consumption. It is because we consider the Middle East so precious for its oil that we are so willing to unquestioningly support Israel, our proxy in the region, instead of serving as a true “honest broker” for a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We are held captive and helpless in the wake of near-$80 oil by regimes like Iran and Venezuela because they could cut off our oil at any time, with extreme consequences for our economy.

We got here because we ignored Jimmy Carter, who once famously called energy independence the moral equivalent of war. Check out what he said on July 15th, 1979 in his “Crisis of Confidence” speech:

In little more than two decades we’ve gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. This is the direct cause of the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline. It’s a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation.

The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977– never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade — a saving of over four and a half million barrels of imported oil per day.

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. I’m announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation’s history to develop America’s own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.

I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace two and a half million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to five billion dollars in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.

Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank which will help us achieve the crucial goal of twenty percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans, to Americans. These will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.

Point four: I’m asking Congress to mandate, to require as a matter of law, that our nation’s utility companies cut their massive use of oil by fifty percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, especially coal, our most abundant energy source.

Point five: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.

We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

Point six: I’m proposing a bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle. This effort will permit you to build conservation into your homes and your lives at a cost you can afford.

Twenty-seven years later it becomes apparent how foolish we have been to ignore his proposals and his commitment to energy independence. Some of his ideas were good, some not so good, but in their aggregate we would have been moved to freedom from our oil addiction to other countries. We were lulled to sleep through the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations because of the easing of the Middle East crises of the day and because of new oil finds in places like the North Sea. Now we’re right back where we were; and actually we are worse off because all the oil that’s easy to get is now gone and remaining reserves are increasingly in the hands of unstable or unfriendly countries. The oil we need is now in the hands of terrorists.

How different this outcome would have been had we followed the path to energy independence laid out by Jimmy Carter. Ironically, while we ignored Carter and booted him out of office, Brazil paid attention. Almost 30 years later Brazil has announced its energy independence from the rest of the world by virtue of its development of ethanol crops and technology. The US, by comparison, is hamstrung by a crazy and nuke-obsessed Iran and helpless against ever-rising oil prices.

Maybe Carter bungled his foreign policy during his last year in office, such as the Iranian Shah/hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan–but you have to give the man his due. He was prescient, and the rest of us were foolish.

Those who vilify Carter today would also do well to remember that Americans now rate Bush II as the worst president since World War 2.

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Tagged as: alternative-energy, bush, carter, Energy, energy-independence, iran, iraq, petroleum