It’s not about independence; it’s about the health of the planet

When Barack Obama proposed drilling for oil and natural gas off the East Coast, he not only played co-dependent to our national oil addiction, he endorsed a dangerous rhetorical trope.

His speech at Andrews Air Force Base focused on “energy security” and “independence,” laudible-sounding goals that obscure the real dangers of our oil economy. It’s not just that we are reliant on unstable regimes for oil, which leaves us vulnerable economically to unrest. The issue goes much deeper.

It’s not “energy independence” we should be striving for, but independence from oil itself. Oil, as Peter Maass’ fine book Crude World shows, is a corrupting influence on the world, encouraging kleptocracies in most nations with significant reserves and distorting the vision of those that need it, like us. It incites violence, whether full-scale wars or internecine strife.

And it is killing the planet. Drilling, even with new technologies, is horribly intrusive and will become more so as the oil we seek becomes more difficult to draw from the ground. And burning oil as fuel fouls the air, rots the ozone layer, poisons us and the rest of the planet, with the residue of car exhausts ending up in our acquifers.

Were we suddenly to find enough oil in Wyoming, the issue of importing from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria and other unsavory regimes would go away. We would have “energy independence” and “energy security” but we still would need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.

The issue is one of public health and planetary health and we should be framing the debate this way.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet