Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells – Our Ride to the Renewable Future. Amanda Little

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СКАЧАТЬ was now being held hostage to obscure border clashes in strange parts of the world.”

      In 1973, Saudi Arabia and some of its partners in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) ordered a total embargo on oil exports to the United States. The reason for the embargo was precisely the conflict of interest that had been outlined decades earlier on the Quincy: the United States could not reconcile its strong alliances with both the Jewish and Muslim worlds. Israel’s longtime foes Egypt and Syria had launched a surprise attack on two fronts in Israel, the latest in an ongoing series of conflicts since Israel proclaimed statehood in 1948. It was the afternoon of October 6, 1973—Yom Kippur, the most sacred Jewish holiday. Israel was badly in need of aid, and the United States was faced with the hard decision of choosing between its allies. Nixon launched Operation Nickel Grass to secretly airlift supplies to Israel. “Send everything that can fly,” Nixon told his secretary of state Henry Kissinger. The supplies—more than 22,000 tons—were supposed to be airlifted under the cover of night, but a glitch caused some planes to arrive during the day for all to see. The Muslim world was infuriated by what it perceived as a blatant show of U.S. support for its enemy. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (a son of Ibn Saud, as have been all the kingdom’s rulers) had previously warned the United States that “America’s complete support for Zionism and against the Arabs makes it extremely difficult for us to continue to supply the United States with oil, or even to remain friends with the United States.” As a punishment, OPEC’s Middle Eastern members enacted the embargo on October 17.

      The economic fallout that ensued transformed OPEC into “a household word—not just an obscure acronym” throughout the United States, noted one article, “and for the first time turned Western attention to the distant lands they unknowingly relied on.” Within months, the price of oil had jumped from under $3 a barrel to almost $12 a barrel. In turn, consumer prices soared, along with unemployment and inflation. Nixon’s hands were tied—there was the option of forcibly seizing Middle Eastern oil fields, but it would have been all but impossible to generate popular support for such tactics in the wake of the Vietnam war.

      The government reluctantly made a necessary—but in ways distinctly un-American—move: it required consumers to curb their energy consumption. Though fuel conservation had been viewed as a patriotic sacrifice during World War II, Nixon’s action was a radical measure given the energy-lavish habits of the postwar boom decades. The president instructed home owners to dial back their thermostats, and companies shortened their working hours. Though the embargo was ended in March 1974, its ripple effects on world oil prices and inflation would continue to be felt throughout the decade.

      During the late 1970s, the Carter administration set forth a doctrine that very clearly harked back to FDR’s original promise to King Saud. President Carter vowed that the United States would from that time on take the lead in defending the Gulf. Access to Persian Gulf oil is a vital national interest, he acknowledged, and to protect that interest the United States would be prepared to use “any means necessary, including military force.” This liberal president was spelling out in no uncertain terms the intimate ties between U.S. foreign policy and petroleum.

      But Carter also tried to tackle the oil problem from a different, demand-side angle, offering a prophetic address to the American public calling for a substantial reduction in U.S. oil demands:

      Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis…is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century…By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

      Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress…Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices. The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation…This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war”—except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

      Carter was right about many things, including the fact that his proposals were unpopular from the get-go. He developed efficiency standards for appliances and buildings. He created a well-funded R & D program to promote the development of solar power, wind turbines, and electric cars—programs that led to the first commercial applications of these technologies. He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. He kept the thermostat low and gave his presidential addresses in a trademark wool cardigan that came to represent his persistent pleas to the American public to voluntarily curb energy use.

      During the Carter era, America managed to reduce its daily petroleum consumption by 18 percent, thanks in part to strict new efficiency standards for cars. This achievement was soon to be reversed. By 1981, when President Reagan took office, the embargo was a fading memory; oil supplies were bountiful, and prices were sinking back to levels not seen for a decade. Reagan ordered the solar panels removed from the White House roof. Celebrating the restoration of cheap oil, Reagan promptly cut the funding for Carter’s alternative energy program and eased fuel economy standards. In doing so, he encouraged a trend of upward-climbing energy demand in America that deepened our dependence on the oil-rich Middle East. It also intensified U.S. military vigilance in the region, as any kind of volatility there could spell another oil shock.

      STORMY DESERT

      Trouble bubbled up again in the Middle East in the 1980s as combative neighbors Iran and Iraq fought out a long-running territorial skirmish in a costly and inconclusive war. At the war’s end, the regime of Saddam Hussein was heavily in debt and the country’s petroleum infrastructure was in disrepair. Saddam, who had assumed the presidency in 1979, saw an opportunity to erase his debt by seizing the thriving oil fields of neighboring Kuwait. Holding nearly 10 percent of global oil reserves, tiny Kuwait was on a per capita basis one of the wealthiest nations in the world. On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded and rapidly succeeded in occupying Kuwait.

      The United States responded with what was soon dubbed Operation Desert Storm—the first Gulf War. In January 1991, the George H. W. Bush administration declared its intention of removing Iraq from Kuwait—in part to protect the Gulf oil fields. When Dick Cheney, who was than the secretary of defense, described the motivation for war, he cited the Carter doctrine: “that basic fundmental doctrine I think is still in effect today.” Cheney listed among the United States’ “major concerns…the very real possibility that should Saddam Hussein…be allowed to keep Kuwait, that he would be in a position to directly control over 20 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves.” Cheney envisioned a snowball effect in which Saddam would eventually command all the oil in the Middle East:

      Altogether, the Persian Gulf region contains over 70 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves. And the prospects that a man like Saddam Hussein, with his enormous military machine, would be allowed to sit astride that resource without any countervailing force, would be allowed to control the flow of oil to the world’s economy, and…use the enormous wealth that would be generated for nefarious purposes is a prospect that I think most of the world’s civilized nations find abhorrent.

      It was a remarkable comment: U.S. leaders had justified war with explicit reference to defending foreign oil reserves vital to America’s interests.

      Having repaired its alliance with Saudi Arabia after the embargo, the United States assembled half a million troops in the region, poised to protect the 475-mile Saudi border and to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The Desert Storm air campaign began on January 17, 1991, followed by a ground offensive on February 24. Just four days later, Iraqi forces were driven from Kuwait, and President Bush terminated combat operations. But Saddam didn’t leave without revenge: СКАЧАТЬ