Caroline Glick calls on the West to break its dependence on foreign oil:

On a macroeconomic level, as people like R. James Woolsey, Gal Luft, Robert Zubrin, Frank Gaffney, Anne Korin and others have explained convincingly over the past several years, the West needs to end its addiction to foreign oil as quickly as possible. Energy security is a paramount issue.[…] The best course is to seek other means of fuelling cars, trains and airplanes. The key to everything as far as I can see is for all cars to have the capacity to run on fuels other than gasoline – what are called “flex fuel cars” and to have the capacity to run on electricity – what are called “plug-in cars.” What is needed is not so much one solution – but the ability to use many other fuels at once.

Once cars are able to run on methanol and ethanol and electricity as well as gasoline, then you have a lot of options for action. It makes sense to increase the supply of oil as much as possible by drilling in as many places as possible and increasing refining capacities. It also makes sense to start developing massive quantities of methanol that you can produce from just about anything. It makes sense to develop clean coal, increase nuclear energy supplies.

It makes sense to put a floor on the price of imported oil at $60/barrel to ensure that alternative energy sources that are now being developed can be competitive. It would prevent the Arabs from prolonging our dependence on them by flooding the US with cheap oil and pushing all alternatives off the market.

Set America Free Coalition member Frank Gaffney writes:

On the eve of the 4th of July, 2008, Americans are arguably as angry about being taxed without representation as at any time since they declared their independence from Great Britain. At the moment, they are furious about having no say over what amounts to a “tax” levied in the form of extortionate fuel prices driven by the supply-manipulating OPEC oil cartel.

As was true 232 years ago, we must channel that anger into action. This will require not just declaring independence from the Saudi-led oil monopoly, but taking the steps necessary to secure our freedom.

[…]Fortunately, this is not wishful thinking. We have the option right now to require that new automobiles sold in this country be capable of using alcohol-based fuels like ethanol, methanol or butanol instead of or together with gasoline.

This is a well-known technology. There are already 6 million such “Flexible Fuel Vehicles” (FFVs) on America’s highways. Seventy percent of Brazil’s cars are FFVs, many of them made by U.S. auto manufacturers. It costs less than $100 per car to allow a new car to be gasoline-independent – less than it costs to fill up many of our vehicles at today’s gas prices.

The really good news is that both Senators John McCain and Barak Obama have declared their support for the Open Fuel Standard that must be adopted to ensure that each of the roughly 17 million cars we buy in this country every year are Flexible Fuel Vehicles.

The Wall Street Journal profiles Set America Free’s Jim Woolsey:

James Woolsey, a Beltway Democrat-turned-Republican, is plotting to go “off-grid” and tools around town in a plug-in hybrid with a bumper sticker that says “Osama Bin Laden Hates This Car.”[…]

Mr. Woolsey’s mantra […] is that the U.S. needs to break its dependence on Middle Eastern oil. […] Mr. Woolsey says he first got “ticked off” over energy when he got stuck in a gas line in 1973 — “and I’m still ticked off.” What also peeves him are critics who snipe at the call for independence without understanding it.

No, the U.S. can’t cut itself off from all oil imports or turn itself into an “economic hermit,” he says. “But we can destroy oil’s monopoly over transportation.”

Cars, trucks and planes gobble up nearly seven out of every 10 barrels of oil consumed in the U.S., the Energy Department says. Mr. Woolsey wants to chop that way down. […]A frenetic talker with a shiny pate, Mr. Woolsey insists that America’s salvation lies mainly in battery-powered cars and alternative fuels. […]

Perhaps because of his own mixed political lineage, Mr. Woolsey is known for bringing odd birds together. His Set America Free Coalition, a group dedicated to weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, runs the gamut from conservative evangelical Gary Bauer to prairie liberals like Tom Daschle, the former senator from South Dakota.

Steve Huntley writes in the Chicago Sun Times:

I and others have written the country needs a Manhattan Project to free us from a dependence on overseas oil that only enriches countries that wish us ill, like Iran and Venezuela, and funds hostile ideologies such as fanatical Islamism. In short, energy is a national security issue requiring government intervention in the economy of the type that conservatives like me normally don’t like.

The Manhattan Project was the World War II effort to produce an atom bomb before the Nazis could. Another example was the 1960s program to put a man on the moon before the Soviet Union could.

These required new technologies, and my thinking on energy tended to focus on finding new technologies. Others with better minds have come up with a Manhattan Project for energy that requires no scientific breakthroughs and uses current infrastructure. Those are the guiding principles of “A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security” from Set America Free. It’s a coalition of individuals and organizations across the political spectrum ranging from social conservatives to environmentalists, or, as one of them puts it — “tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, cheap hawks and evangelicals.”

ThreatsWatch notes:

the Congressional testimony of Anne Korin should grab your attention today, as we hit bin Laden’s goal.

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, about ten years ago, Osama bin Laden stated that his target price for oil is $144 a barrel and that the American people, who allegedly robbed the Muslim people of their oil, owe each Muslim man, woman, and child $30,000 in back payments. At the time, $144 a barrel seemed farfetched to most. Today, bin Laden is a mere $20 a barrel short of his target and there is little doubt it will be attained. I would like to impress upon this Committee that $144 a barrel oil will be perceived as a victory for the Jihadist movement and a reaffirmation that the economic warfare component of its campaign against the West is a resounding success. There is no need to elaborate on the implications of such a victory in terms of loss of U.S. prestige and our ability to prevail in the Long War of the 21st century. It is therefore imperative that the U.S. Congress do its utmost to forestall such a setback.

The Philadelphia Bulletin notes:

The Set America Free Coalition offers another perspective on America’s dependence on oil imports. The goal of Set America Free is to strip oil of its strategic value for OPEC by providing Americans with greater transportation fuel choices, including plug-in hybrid cars and flexible fuel vehicles. The plug-in hybrids are like other hybrids except they have bigger batteries and can drive 20 miles on a single charge. Flexible fuel vehicles, which are widely used in Brazil allow cars to run a variety of fuel types, giving consumers a choice at the pump between gas and alcohol. “We’re always going to need oil…we need to make oil just another commodity” Anne Korin, Set America Free Chair said.

Joe Romm says it so we don’t have to:

[N]obody should get terribly excited when a car company rolls out its wildly impractical next-generation hydrogen car. Too many miracles are required for it to be a marketplace winner.[…] Who, exactly, is going to buy a car that can’t easily find fuel? On the other hand, who is going to build tens of thousands of fuelling stations - price tag $2m apiece or more - until the cars are wildly successful? That is the so-called chicken-and-egg problem, which is especially acute for hydrogen. [..]And yet the media can’t get enough of these hi-tech Edsels. The New York Times, of all places, writes:

Fuel cells have an advantage over electric cars, whose batteries take hours to recharge and use electricity, which, in the case of the United States, China and many other countries, is often produced by coal-burning power plants.

Is the Times unaware that electricity is pretty much available everywhere, whereas hydrogen is essentially available nowhere? Is the Times unaware that the per-mile fuel cost of an electric car is probably one-quarter that of a hydrogen fuel-cell car? Is the Times unaware that electric-car manufacturers are working on “exchangeable batteries”, which would make a battery swap about as fast as it takes to refuel a car with hydrogen?

Most egregious: Where, exactly, does the Times think hydrogen comes from? Santa Claus? […]

If you build it, the media will come, but don’t hold your breath waiting for mass-market hydrogen-car buyers. In two years, GM and Toyota have promised to deliver plug-in hybrids. That will be a real step closer to a future free of petroleum.

Go Joe!

We quoted Senator McCain’s endorsement of a shift to flex fuel vehicles the other day, and here is a quote from Senator Obama’s energy factsheet:

Barack Obama believes that all new vehicles sold in the U.S. should be flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs), which means they can run on biofuel blends like E85. Obama will work with Congress and auto companies to ensure that all new vehicles have FFV capability by the end of his first term in office.

Last September Jim Woolsey and Anne Korin wrote:

A determined pack has begun to race its engines and to try to shoulder us off the road toward energy independence. It’s time for those determined to stay on the track to drive aggressively. The energy-independence question is really about oil — the rest of U.S. energy use presents important issues, but not the danger of our being subject to the control of nations that “do not particularly like us,” as the president put it. Some of the engine racers have an economic interest in keeping our transportation system 97-percent oil-dependent. Less understandable are the authors of a recent Council on Foreign Relations report accusing those working for such independence of “doing the nation a disservice.”

The authors of that report and their followers define “independence,” contrary to both Webster’s and common sense, as essentially “autarky” — i.e. complete self-sufficiency, or not importing oil even though we remain dependent on it. Such a Pickwickian definition captures none of the thinking of serious advocates of reducing our oil dependence: The point of independence is not to be an economic hermit, but rather to be a free actor.

It is true that some who promote oil independence spice their remarks by implying that we might substitute oil from domestic sources or from our near neighbors for cheap Middle Eastern imports, and somehow manage to insulate ourselves from the world oil market.

But speechwriters’ tropes shouldn’t be taken as serious policy proposals. Geology will not cooperate in any such fantasy. There is no reasonable way that we can leave oil in place as the near-exclusive fuel for the world’s transportation systems and simultaneously wall ourselves off from the world oil market. If we want to end dependence on the whims of OPEC’s despots, the substantial instabilities of the Middle East, and the indignity of paying for both sides in the War on Terror, we must define oil “independence” sensibly — as doing whatever is necessary to avoid oil’s being the instrument of despotic leverage and foreign chaos.

Yesterday former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, explained independence does not mean autarky::

[McCain advisor Fiorina said] the plan to become strategically independent from foreign oil does not mean completely cutting off oil supplies from the Middle East.
“That is an unrealistic goal to say we will not get oil from the Middle East,” Fiorina said. “But what it does say is that if a regime in the Middle East is hostage to our interests or the pricing of a regime in the Middle East is hostile to our economy, then we have other sources of energy that we can choose to say ‘No thanks. We’re not going to play.’ “

Freedom means choice.

Back in 2003, Gal Luft and Anne Korin wrote: “However, after the attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of U.S.’ economic and military dominance, terrorist organizations of global reach like al Qaeda have identified the world’s energy system as a major vulnerability and a certain way to deliver a blow to America’s oil dependent economy as well as global economy at large. With attacks against transportation networks, military bases and government installations becoming more difficult to execute due to heightened security, terrorists looking for a big bang might find oil, to quote al Qaeda, the “umbilical cord and lifeline of the crusader community,” the object of the next major assault on the west, an assault that could wreak havoc with America’s economy and way of life. ”

Fast forward to the present, where attacks on oil targets have removed a significant amount of oil from the global market contributing to the drastic rise in prices. The likelihood of a catastrophic attack against a hub of the global oil market is high. AP reports: “Saudi authorities arrested 701 suspected al-Qaida-linked militants in 2008, some of whom planned a car bomb attack on an oil installation, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.” The threat extends beyond the Middle East: Nigeria, for example, has lost almost one million barrels a day of production due to attacks, the most recent of which were last week.