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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 27, 2007 / 8 Nissan 5767

Energy to burn

By Mort Zuckerman

Mort Zuckerman
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | There is the Pledge of Allegiance-and then there is the pledge on energy. The first is revered. The second is empty. None of the programs to relieve our dependence on foreign oil (or reduce global warming) have had much impact-witness the fact that, in the past 35 years, we have gone from relying on imported oil for 35 percent of our energy needs to today, when imports supply 60 percent of the fuel we consume.


Programs that could have worked have not been implemented. Who is to blame? All of us. Really. Americans hate higher prices at the pump, even though they tend to discourage consumption. Auto companies dislike tougher fuel-efficiency standards. And politicians, of course, don't like to make tough decisions.


A perfect illustration is the history of fuel efficiency. Astonishingly, average fuel efficiency for new vehicles has dropped since 1988. Six years into office, President Bush is belatedly asking the auto industry to improve its miles-per-gallon ratings by 4 percent a year in all new vehicles. If passed-without loopholes-this would help, but less than 8 percent of the nation's auto fleet turns over every year, so it's going to take time to get a lot more fuel-efficient vehicles on our roads.


Another option is to force us to change our habits by raising taxes on gas and oil. This is another political no-no because we are a nation weaned on inexpensive gasoline: Americans can and do drive everywhere in our very large country, and in large swaths of the nation there is no public transportation, so a car is the only way of getting to work.


What about recovering more oil within our borders? It is mainly in the Arctic and on the continental shelf. We might get at least a helpful million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but that has become such a political hot potato it is now off the table as a legislative option.


There is even less prospect of progressively attacking global warming. Energy use sustains economic growth and, in turn, enhances political and social stability. Poor countries are not going to sacrifice this growth and its benefits simply to placate the global warming fears of the rich world-which already consumes many times as much fuel per person as do poorer countries. Nor can we expect an overall reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions when China is firing up a new big coal-fuel generating plant every few days. By 2030, China will have built 2,200 coal-fuel plants! Think of this: If China and India begin consuming per capita quantities of oil even approaching those of countries like Japan, which consumes only about half the per capita energy that we do, global oil demand will double from 85 million barrels a day to roughly 170 million barrels.


Fix du jour. Given the cost gap between fossil fuels and alternative sources, with coal being the cheapest-and dirtiest-it is hard to imagine how we are going to take carbon emissions off automatic pilot.


Nuclear power? It produces waste that is very toxic and concentrated and will last forever. The uncertainty about its costs and benefits will inhibit its growth.


Windmill turbines, solar energy, hydrogen, etc., are all attractive-but years and years away from filling a fraction of our needs.


The typical American reaction is a technology fix. The fix du jour is ethanol, but it is certainly no elixir. It is expensive. Without subsidies running around $9 billion today, there would be no corn-based ethanol at all. Ethanol, moreover, uses corn and absorbs something like 20 percent of all the corn production of America, skewing the price of corn feed for poultry, hogs, and cattle, which in turn raises meat prices.


So the indirect costs are also substantial, particularly since ethanol, at best, produces only slightly more energy than it consumes. Markets can deliver low-cost energy most of the time and high-cost energy some of the time; ethanol markets deliver high-cost energy all of the time with, at best, a modest impact on our energy needs.


Now the new ethanol hope is cellulosic ethanol, which is sugar-based, but this is estimated to cost over $2.50 per gallon to produce. In other words, we are decades away from relying on this as an efficient source of energy, but our politicians will talk a lot about ethanol and vote still more subsidies for it. The "feel good" idea that ethanol is an alternative fuel will be promoted because it is the least costly politically: The tendency in government is always to choose losers requiring subsidies that will benefit selected constituencies but have minimal broad public benefit. Our leaders would rather avoid the tough issues of fuel efficiency and higher taxes.


Our energy crisis is undeniable, unending, and unsustainable. Depressingly, it joins a whole series of other serious, long-term issues, like Social Security reform, healthcare reform, and a fiscal crisis that our political system seems utterly unable to address, much less resolve.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Mort Zuckerman is editor-in-chief and publisher of U.S. News and World Report. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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