Comments (0)Obama: Day One
November 14, 2008Andrew A. Buerger
Publisher
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, remarked about the importance of a two state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian issue earlier this week, “The single most important thing is that the new administration in the United States grips this issue from Day One.”
As an American Jew, I can emphasis how important that is, and I’m sure the 47 million Americans without health insurance, the 6.5 percent of out-of-work Americans and the million employees who depend on the Big Three all think their problems should be addressed on Day One.
Some people believe that energy independence trumps everything else. I think they have a real point. What if President Barack Obama made that his big, hairy, audacious goal of becoming energy independent by 2016 starting with the Big Three?
Already he’s talking about providing loans to the car makers to help them retool for more energy efficient cars. That would help propel America to the leading producer of green technology, harnessing a rusting workforce to once again export American ingenuity.
What might happen were the United States to find alternatives to the combustion engine?
The rest of the developing world would buy green technology from American companies; naturally the price of oil would drop. That would have cascading effects — as we’ve seen in the last few weeks.
Iran is so reliant on oil revenue that it might beg for a meeting with President Obama on our terms; Tehran cannot survive with oil below $75 per barrel. They would be forced to halt their nuclear weapon program, which threatens Israeli’s existence. If Iran cannot take care of its people, it surely cannot fund Hezbollah and Hamas.
Without that funding, Hezbollah and Hamas would have no missiles to launch at Israel, or money to train and pay suicide bombers. They, too, would want to be on President Obama’s agenda, just as Yasser Arafat ran to the United States when his old Soviet/Russian friends’ money dried up as the Cold War ended. A safe, solid two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be achievable, quickly.
Speaking of Russia, when oil drops back to $40, when we have an alternative to the combustion engine, Vladimir Putin won’t be rearing his head in Alaska or in Georgia. (That’s the country, not the state.) He’d be too busy trying to feed his own people to threaten someone else’s.
Oil below $40 per barrel in eight years. Hugo Chavez who?
I’m oversimplifying the solutions. It’s a monumental task to move from a petroleum-based society to other alternatives, such as plug-in hybrids, natural gas, or electric cars. We don’t have the infrastructure… Yet.
But what better time is there to create an FDR-like public works project that can retrofit our nation to take advantage of our wind and solar capabilities?
Last week I met with David Houle, a futurist and author of “The Shift Age.” He believes we are leaving the Information Age into a time defined by three factors: accelerating electronic connectedness; the flow to global; and lastly, the flow to the individual. An example of this is how the power has gone from Media TV titans who told you what to watch and when, to the person controlling the Tivo remote.
He says that our lifestyle based around commuting from the exurbs in our combustion engine cars is not sustainable. However, if we can turn the automobile factory workers in Detroit into people who assemble green technology, we can again be the dominant global force.
David predicted the current crisis, and sees this as a great opportunity for the United States, the world, and this new U.S. administration. “We should be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past,” he told me. “It is this state of mind that ushers in new opportunities and prepares one for fundamental change.”
If we can leverage our power to shift from the past of a petroleum-based society to creating a new one from alternative energy sources, we can fix our economic problems, solve the Middle East crisis, and save GM, Ford, and Chrystler.
That will make Tony Blair happy and give President Obama plenty of time to tackle our battered healthcare system.