More Consumption Isn’t An Oil Strategy

It’s now been 35 years since the first Arab oil embargo provided America with a wake-up call about the dangers associated with the nation’s over-reliance on oil imports from countries that don’t really like us.

Since then, Americans have been in a permanent state of denial about the dangers that our energy profligacy has created for our economy and environment. We now know that our excess fuel consumption is undermining not only our national defense, the value of the dollar and the well-being of the U.S. economy, but the health of the world’s climate as well.


So what have our policy responses been to this challenge? Over the past three decades, cars and trucks have gotten larger and less fuel efficient, total vehicle-miles traveled have burgeoned, and we have taken virtually no steps to develop alternative fuels or alternatives to ever-longer commutes on increasingly crowded highways.

Consequently, the nation’s energy supply has gone from one-third to two-thirds reliant on foreign oil. America’s energy and tax policies have been stuck in the 1950s, when we were the world’s largest petroleum exporter, instead of the largest importer that we are today.

With oil hovering around $120 per barrel and gas prices exceeding $4 per gallon, political leaders are looking for scapegoats, not real solutions, to the mess that is our national energy policy.

Hartford Courant