Oil is often called the lifeblood of our economy-the
indispensable commodity that keeps commerce humming and America on the
move. But, in today's world, our dependency on foreign oil and the way we
use hydrocarbons is a major strategic vulnerability, a serious threat to
our security, our economy and the well being of our planet.
Fortunately, there are times in a nation's history when great challenges
coalesce with great moments of opportunity. We are at such a moment today.
We have the urgent need and the opportunity to build a safer and thriving
future with more diverse, reliable, and cleaner energy. But it will take
another indispensable commodity to make it happen -American leadership.
I'm running for President to help provide that leadership. And I want to
talk a little today about the direction I want to lead us and why.
Oil is a vital resource and we will always need it. But we
account for 25% of global demand and possess less than 3% of proven
reserves. Most of the world's known reserves are in the Persian Gulf, in
the hands of dictators or nationalized oil companies. Its availability and
price are manipulated by a cartel of countries where our values aren't
typically shared and our interests aren't their first priority.
By mid-century there will be three-and-a-half billion cars
worldwide-over four times the number today. Most of the growth will take
place in the developing world, in India and China, but the increase in
fuel prices, pollution, and climate impacts will be felt worldwide. As
world demand for oil soars, higher prices, severe economic volatility, and
heightened international tensions follow. These unpredictable forces could
seriously circumscribe our future if we let them. Great nations don't
leave the "lifeblood" of their economy in the hands of foreign cartels or
bet their future on a commodity located in countries where authoritarians
repress their people and terrorists find their main support. Terrorists
understand the seriousness of our vulnerability. Al Qaeda plans for
attacks on oil facilities in the Middle East to destroy the American
economy. A little over a year ago, a suicide attack at a major Saudi
Arabian oil refinery came close to disabling its target. Had it succeeded,
it would have driven the world price of oil above $150 dollars a barrel
-and kept it there for a year.
We're one successful attack away from an economic crisis.
The flow of oil has many chokepoints - pipelines, refineries, transit
routes, and terminals; most of them outside our jurisdiction and control.
Our enemies understand the effects on America of a significant disruption
in supplyâ€" a crippled transportation system, gasoline too expensive for
many Americans to purchase, businesses closed.
Al Qaeda must revel in the irony that America is
effectively helping to fund both sides of the war they caused. As we
sacrifice blood and treasure, some of our gas dollars flow to the fanatics
who build the bombs, hatch the plots, and carry out attacks on our
soldiers and citizens. Iran made over $45 billion from oil sales in 2005,
and it is the number one state sponsor of terrorism.
The transfer of American wealth to the Middle East helps
sustain the conditions on which terrorists prey. Some of the most oil-rich
nations are the most stagnant societies on earth. As long as petro-dollars
flow freely to them those regimes have little incentive to open their
politics and economies so that all their people may benefit from their
countries' natural wealth. The Middle East's example is spreading to our
own hemisphere. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is using his country's oil
revenues to establish a dictatorship, bully his neighbors and succeed
Castro as Latin America's leading antagonist of the United States. The
politics of oil impede the global progress of our values, and restrains
governments from acting on the most basic impulses of human decency. There
is only one reason China has opposed sanctions to pressure Sudan to stop
the killing in Darfur: China needs Sudan's oil.
The burning of oil and other fossil fuels is contributing
to the dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases in the earth's
atmosphere, altering our climate with the potential for major social,
economic and political upheaval. The world is already feeling the powerful
effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if
we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue, and wreak
havoc with God's creation. A group of senior retired military officers
recently warned about the potential upheaval caused by conflicts over
water, arable land and other natural resources under strain from a warming
planet. The problem isn't a Hollywood invention nor is doing something
about it a vanity of Cassandra like hysterics. It is a serious and urgent
economic, environmental and national security challenge.
National security depends on energy security, which we
cannot achieve if we remain dependent on imported oil from Middle Eastern
governments who support or foment by their own inattention and inequities
the rise of terrorists or on swaggering demagogues and would be dictators
in our hemisphere.
There's no doubt it's an enormous challenge. But is it too
big a challenge for America to tackle; this great country that has never
before confronted a problem it couldn't solve? No, it is not. No people
have ever been better innovators and problem solvers than Americans. It is
in our national DNA to see challenges as opportunities; to conquer
problems beyond the expectation of an admiring world. America, relying as
always on the industry and imagination of a free people, and the power and
innovation of free markets, is capable of overcoming any challenge from
within and without our borders. Our enemies believe we're too weak to
overcome our dependence on foreign oil. Even some of our allies think
we're no longer the world's most visionary, most capable country or
committed to the advancement of mankind. I think we know better than that.
I think we know who we are and what we can do. Now, let's remind the
world.
George Gershwin wrote that good music reflects its people
and times. "My people are Americans," he said. "My time is today." That's
what made his music memorable. That's what made all America's best
accomplishments memorable. We were capable and confident, we aspired to
greatness and we understood our times. Our time is today, my friends, and
the achievements of our storied past will shine no brighter than those we
accomplish right now, in our time, if we meet our problems confidently and
honestly; if we trust in the strength and ideals of free people; if we
aspire to greatness.
As President, I'll propose a national energy strategy that
will amount to a declaration of independence from the fear bred by our
reliance on oil sheiks and our vulnerability to the troubled politics of
the lands they rule. When we reach the limits of military power and
diplomacy to contain the dangers of that cauldron of burning resentments
and extremism, energy security is our best defense. We won't achieve it
tomorrow, but we must achieve it in our time.
The strategy I propose won't be another grab bag of
handouts to this or that industry and a full employment act for lobbyists.
It will promote the diversification and conservation of our energy sources
that will in sufficient time break the dominance of oil in our
transportation sector just as we diversified away from oil use in electric
power generation thirty years ago; and substantially reduce the impact of
our energy consumption on the planet. It will rely on the genius and
technological prowess of American industry and science. Government must
set achievable goals, but the markets should be free to produce the means.
And those means are within our reach.
Energy efficiency by using improved technology and
practicing sensible habits in our homes, businesses and automobiles is a
big part of the answer, and is something we can achieve right now. And new
advances will make conservation an ever more important part of the
solution. Improved light bulbs can use much less energy; smart grid
technology can help homeowners and businesses lower their energy use, and
breakthroughs in high tech materials can greatly improve fuel efficiency
in the transportation sector. We need to dispel the image of conservation
that entails shivering in cold rooms, reading by candlelight, and lower
productivity. Americans have it in their power today to contribute to our
national security, prosperity and a cleaner environment. They understand
the dangers we face, and are prepared to respond to appeals to patriotism
that explain how we can free ourselves from them.
We need not wait for another age, in which science fiction
becomes every day reality. Flexible-fuel vehicles aren't futuristic pie in
the sky. We can easily deploy such technology today for less than $100 per
vehicle; and we must develop the infrastructure necessary to take full
advantage. We were able to overcome the challenges of putting seatbelts,
airbags, and computer technology in practically every car. We can provide
fuel options and improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet by
making them out of high tech materials that improve their strength and
safety. We are doing that very thing right now to beat our foreign
competitors in the aerospace industry.
Alcohol fuels made from corn, sugar, switch grass and many
other sources, fuel cells, biodiesel derived from waste products, natural
gas, and other technologies are all promising and available alternatives
to oil. I won't support subsidizing every alternative or tariffs that
restrict the healthy competition that stimulates innovation and lower
costs. But I'll encourage the development of infrastructure and market
growth necessary for these products to compete, and let consumers choose
the winners. I've never known an American entrepreneur worthy of the name
who wouldn't rather compete for sales than subsidies.
America's electricity production is for the most part
petroleum free, and the existing electric power grid has the capacity to
handle the added demand imposed by plug-in hybrid vehicles. We can add
more capacity and improve its reliability in the years ahead. Nuclear
energy, renewable power, and other emission free forms of power production
can expand capacity, improve local air quality and address climate change.
I'll work to promote real partnerships between utilities and automakers to
accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids.
With some of the savings from cutting subsidies for
industries that can stand on their own, we can establish a national
challenge to improve the cost, range, size, and weight of electric
batteries for automobiles. Fifty percent of cars on the road are driven 25
miles a day or less. Affordable battery-powered vehicles that can meet
average commuter needs could help us cut oil imports in half. The reward
will be earned through merit by whomever accomplishes the task, whether a
laboratory in the Department of Energy, a university, a corporation or an
enterprising young inventor who works out of his family's garage.
There is much we can do to increase our own oil production
in ways that protect the environment using advanced technologies,
including those that use and bury carbon dioxide, to recover the oil below
the wells we have already drilled, and tap oil, natural gas, and shale
economically with minimal environmental impact.
The United States has coal reserves more abundant than
Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. We found a way to cut down acid rain
pollutants from burning coal, and we can find a way to use our coal
resources without emitting excessive greenhouse gases.
We have in use today a zero emission energy that could
provide electricity for millions more homes and businesses than it
currently does. Yet it has been over twenty-five years since a nuclear
power plant has been constructed. The barriers to nuclear energy are
political not technological. We've let the fears of thirty years ago, and
an endless political squabble over the storage of nuclear spent fuel make
it virtually impossible to build a single new plant that produces a form
of energy that is safe and non-polluting. If France can produce 80% of its
electricity with nuclear power, why can't we? Is France a more secure,
advanced and innovative country than we are? Are France's scientists and
entrepreneurs more capable than we are? I need no answer to that
rhetorical question. I know my country well enough to know otherwise.
Let's provide for safe storage of spent nuclear fuel, and
give host states or localities a proprietary interest so when advanced
recycling technologies turn used fuel into a valuable commodity, the
public will share in its economic benefits.
I want to improve and make permanent the research and
development tax credit. I want to spend less money on government
bureaucracies, and, where the private sector isn't moving out of
regulatory fear, to form the partnerships necessary to build demonstration
models of promising new technologies such as advanced nuclear power
plants, coal gasification, carbon capture and storage, and renewable power
so we can take maximum advantage of our most abundant resources. And I'll
make it a national mission to develop a catalyst capable of breaking down
carbon dioxide into useful chemical building blocks, and rendering it a
new source of revenue and opportunity.
America competes in a global economy where innovation and
entrepreneurship are the pillars of prosperity. The competition is stiff
and the stakes are high. We have the opportunity to apply America's
technological supremacy to capture the export markets for advanced energy
technologies, reaping the capital investment and good jobs it will
provide. Our innovators, scientists, entrepreneurs and workers have the
knowledge, resources, and drive to lead the way on energy security, as we
have in so many other world-changing advancements. The race has always
been to the swift, and America must be first to market with innovations
that meet mankind's growing energy and environmental needs. Again,
government should set the standards, and leave it to the marketplace to
win the race.
I have proposed a bipartisan plan to address the problem of
climate change and stimulate the development and use of advanced
technologies. It is a market-based approach that would set reasonable caps
on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions, and provide industries with
tradable credits. By reducing its emissions, a utility or industrial plant
can generate credits it may trade on the open market for a profit,
offering a powerful incentive to drive the deployment of new and better
energy sources and technologies; for automakers to develop new ways to
lower pollution and increase mileage; for utilities to generate cleaner
electricity and capture carbon; for appliance manufacturers to make more
efficient products, and for the nation to use energy with maximum
efficiency-building conservation into the economy in a manner that
produces financial and environmental benefits. Dupont Corporation has
reaped $2 billion dollars in energy savings and reduced its carbon
emissions by 72% since 1990.
As it always does, the profit motive will attract the
transformational power of venture capital, and unleash the market to move
clean alternative fuels and advanced energy technologies from the margins
into the mainstream.
Some urge we do nothing because we can't be certain how bad
the problem might become or they presume the worst effects are most likely
to occur in our grandchildren's lifetime. I'm a proud conservative, and I
reject that kind of live-for-today, "me generation," attitude. It is
unworthy of us and incompatible with our reputation as visionaries and
problem solvers. Americans have never feared change. We make change work
for us.
In the coming months, other proposals will be offered to
establish a national climate policy. I welcome this. But let's not let
urgency breed rashness and irresponsibility. I claim no monopoly on the
best answers. Let the marketplace of ideas flourish. But as there is great
reward in the responsible policy, there's also enormous risk in the wrong
way forward. The policy must include mechanisms to control costs and
protect the economy. Just as there is danger in doing too little, there is
peril in going too far, too fast, in a way that imposes unsustainable
costs on the economy. I believe "cap and trade" is the best way to manage
cost and maximize benefits, but we must look at other market-based means
to give added assurance that our policies are an instrument of job
creation, economic progress, and environmental problem solving.
Climate change is a global problem that requires a global
solution. But we know America has both an obligation and a compelling
national interest in fulfilling our historic leadership role. China's
carbon emissions will soon exceed ours. As President, I will invite a
collaborative relationship with China to make coal use cleaner and climate
friendly. But, we should address the problem on our terms, and bring
others into the fold of a common sense effort to solve it, while we sell
to the world the technologies needed to do it.
Answering great challenges is nothing new to America. It's
what we do. We built the rockets that took us to the moon not because it
was easy but because it was hard. We've sent space probes into the distant
reaches of the universe. We harnessed nuclear energy, mapped the human
genome, created the Internet and pioneered integrated circuits that
possess the computing power of Apollo spacecraft on a single silicon chip
you can barely see. In twenty years we've gone from using this cell phone
(SHOW), a $4000 toy for the wealthy, to this cell phone (SHOW), an
inexpensive and virtually universal means of communication. We can solve
our oil dependence. You can't sell me on hopelessness. You can't convince
me the problem is insurmountable. I know my country. I know what we're
capable of. We're capable of unimaginable progress, unmatched prosperity,
and vision that sees around the corner of history. We've always understood
our times, accepted our challenges and made from our opportunities,
another better world. My people are Americans. Our time is today. That is
the country I ask to lead.
Source: Realpolitics.com
