If you were to draw a flow chart tracing every terrorist attack against the United States back through every foreign alliance, military mutual aid pact, joint military exercise, bloody political coup, intrigue and tacit alliance, the lines would generally flow back to one common factor. Oil.
Our foreign policy is captive to oil. Our position as a superpower is dependent on oil. (The Pentagon runs on oil. That's why US motorists—unlike European drivers who pay much higher prices for petrol—enjoy a unique hidden "subsidy" on the price of gas.)
If we were able to transform our economy into one that operates on clean, renewable energy, we would not only be taking the right measures to mitigate climate change, we would also be taking an important step toward a new foreign policy that is not predicated on the need to control world oil supplies by propping up foreign dictatorships, unpopular dynasties and repressive regimes....
If we were to redirect our economy to operate on clean renewable energy—energy that is available everywhere on Earth and not just beneath the subsoil of despotic Third World governments—we would not only be on the path to mitigating climate change, we would also be on the path to eliminating one of the major causes of terrorism.
The solution is available but the U.S. government (as presently constituted) will never act on it because, to do so, would require the United States to give up its position as the world's reigning Superpower.
Without oil, we have no army. If armies and economies run on oil, whoever controls the oil controls the planet.
If towns, factories and homes could be powered by solar and geothermal energy, no one country could dominate the world's energy-based economies.
It is time to move to a world beyond oil, beyond repression and beyond superpowers.
[Ed.: Could anyone think of a more perverse way for the U.S. to satisfy its mad thirst for oil than by allying itself with Israel?]
