Most of the arguments in favor of electric or natural gas technology for vehicles have been made in the hope of reducing global warming. While this is a valid and important argument, I propose a different reason for reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
My rational is more political than environmental. Whereas, many people believe increasing consumption of fossil fuel is clearly tied to global warming, that connection is not so clear for others. Opposing sides could probably argue about this issue for the next twenty or thirty years, never achieving resolution.
I believe, however, that one thing is irrefutable. Our dependence on foreign oil has some serious political implications. Over 700 billion dollars are leaving our national coffers annually to purchase foreign oil. A fair percentage of world oil supplies comes from countries that have cultural and/or political differences that are in direct opposition to western culture.
For instance, petro dollars are providing Russia with unimaginable hordes of cash. As they recently proved in Georgia, they're feeling their oats from this new infusion of cash and we'll probably have future run-ins with them.
Hugo Chavez has been doing his best to stir up anti-American sentiments in his little part of the world - all due to his influx of petro cash. Now, he and Putin are making agreements about joint military maneuvers in the Southern Hemisphere, attempting to show the U.S. that we are no longer the dominant political power in this part of the world.
But the biggest concern, in my view, is what Saudi Arabia is doing with some of its extra cash. Saudi Arabia represents approximately 1% of the world's Muslim population, according to Tom Friedman in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded, but they fund over 90% of the work related to the spread of their conservative brand of Islam called Wahabbism, or desert Islam.
Saudi Arabia is using petro dollars to build madrassas, which are schools that are being built to spread Wahabbism. They're building schools throughout the world, having built hundreds of them in Pakistan alone.
These schools aren't focusing strictly on education, which, if done properly, would give the children critical independent thinking skills. They concentrate, instead, on teaching them this conservative brand of Islam, which is closer to the literal interpretations of Mohammed. In other words, women are chattel, infidels are not to be trusted and should be converted or else (I'll leave the "or else" part for you to interpret), Islam is destined to be the one world religion, etc. Not much room for compromise here.
So, as much as I would like to convince people to seriously look at the Global Warming threat as to reasons for developing alternative energy sources, I think it is a much easier sell if we argue the National Security implications of foreign dependency.
Either way, we need to reduce our oil dependency; and do it sooner than later.
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