One Aspect You Never Thought Of

Many people have questioned me about the need for "green" energy and technology. Some hold the view "if it ain't broke don't fix it", others believe that the issue of clean energy is a mere question of political allegiance. Still others are focused on other issues in front of Christians today, such as social justice (rightly so), and don't have time or inclination to investigate the issue of clean energy. So let me tell you a story.

Recently in the Operations office, Brendan has been talking about how much he likes Thomas Friedman's newest book called Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America. I purchased this book some months ago, started reading it....and then the house got cleaned and the book was MIA for a while. So I looked for it last night and started reading a few pages where I had left off. The chapter is called "Fill 'er Up With Dictators" and discusses petropolitics.
Setting aside the issue of burning carbon in the form of oil and releasing all the gases that are harmful and damaging, Friedman talks about our addiction to oil in relation to the politics of the OPEC nations. He lays out the scenario- Muslim extremism was a fact, but not widespread- UNTIL American addiction to oil started a massive transfer of wealth from oil-consuming states (America, Western Europe, Japan) to a very few states, namely, the OPEC nations. Friedman features Saudi Arabia in his central thesis, although I should note that this same idea probaby crosses borders like many other issues in middle-eastern areas. Once Saudi Arabia experienced a growth in wealth and influence, the so-called "Urban Muslim" brand of the Muslim religion was pushed out by a more radical, extreme take on the Muslim tradition. Friedman details his definition of the urban Muslim in the book, but I'll just say that the urban Muslim was more moderate in nature. Women could walk on the street without covering, married men and women socialized in the same room of their house, and most importantly, both genders were educated and often in co-ed classrooms. Compare that to what you know about extremism?
How did the radical extremist population become large enough to nudge out the urban Muslim population? Simple. The purchasing dollars that we spent on oil went to countries like Saudi Arabia, in the hands of dictatorships. Those dictatorships then used state funds to fund extremist (male-only) schools. An entire generation was raised in those schools, because it was the only education available in destablilized places like border Pakistan and Afganistan.
The conclusion we can draw from this is also simple. Today, American taxpayers are funding our military to fight extremism. Those same taxpayers have funded and will continue funding the very people our military fights- with each and every oil purchase. We are funding both sides of the war; on the one hand with our tax dollars, and on the other with each dollar we spend on oil.
I had never considered this aspect of the need for clean, OPEC-free energy until reading the chaper on Petropolitics. This is one more reason that clean energy is imperative moving forward.