Sen. Obama, D-Ill., was quite right in saying that breaking the notorious and unparalleled U.S. national addiction to oil consumption would be "one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face" and that it would require "nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy" in his keynote speech Monday in Michigan, historic home state to America's Big Three auto manufacturers, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
Obama was also correct in focusing on the development of hybrid vehicles as a major contribution to easing this energy dependence problem, and he was quite realistic in saying it was possible to have 150 million of them operating on the roads of America within the next seven years.
However, the $1,000 rebate for American energy consumers Obama proposed will only serve as a mere drop in the ocean when set against rising oil prices, while it puts yet another burden on an almost bankrupt national U.S. government.
And even if the U.S. government can somehow conjure up an additional $150 billion over the next 10 years to invest in alternative energy, as Obama imagines, if the federal government remains the final arbiter of where that money goes, it is likely to be as wasted and futile as the $150 billion that has already been spent on alternative energy research over the past 35 years since the first oil shock of 1973-74.
The United States and other large industrialized nations are going to remain dependent on oil for the production of all their plastics, cement and nitrate fertilizer for the foreseeable future. There are quite simply no substitutes in any of these areas except for natural gas, which already has to be imported into the United States and other industrial economies in vast quantities too.
Obama also has to realize that not a single other major industrialized economy in the world has embraced the goal of being completely free of imported energy in the next decade: if that is impossible for Britain, Germany, Japan and China, how much more so will it prove to be impossible for a United States which produces 6 billion barrels of oil per year when it consumes 20 billion?
Also, India and China have a realistic policy of pushing ahead with the construction of new coal-fired power stations at the rate of one a week in each country for the foreseeable future. By contrast, the utilization of America's colossal domestic coal fields in Idaho, Utah and elsewhere, let alone of the American and Canadian oil shales, remains hemmed in with obsessive environmental taboos that Obama has not dared to buck from his own party.
We therefore extend the sound of one hand clapping for Sen., Obama's Monday speech. It marked some progress and contained some welcome and sensible proposals: But not enough.