I have seen a couple of liberal foreign policy wonks say the real strategic asset in the Middle East would be energy independence. The logic goes something like this. The Middle East has four major strategic factors.
1) Petroleum. a distant 2) Israel a distant 3) Location. It's next to everything and sometimes you want to use the Suez Canal or fly over it. 4) Angry people that it sometimes exports. If it weren't for oil we could ignore Saudi Arabi, Iraq and Iran. If Americans weren't such petroleum junkies the Middle East would be less important than sub-Saharan Africa. (Note, it is not enough just to avoid Middle Eastern oil, since there is a global market for crude.) So these pundits, who know foreign policy but nothing more than any lay person about engineering, say it is obvious. Tax and regulate energy consumption (especially petroleum), build nuke plants, dam any remaining rivers, and spend a *LOT* of money researching conservation and alternative energy sources--especially substitutes for petroleum. Then spend the money you raised from the new energy taxes to subsidize implementing the new technologies. Questions: 1) What are the costs and benefits of energy taxation as a means to reduce demand for strategic independence? 2) Is there any hope that research would produce a substitute for petroleum and natural gas based alternatives? (My suspicion is that this is where it falls down, that energy experts [read oil economists and executives] believe that natural gas and crude are the only viable energy sources. 2a) What about coal gas coversion? _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
