U.S. Needs True Leader to Drive Reduction in Oil Consumption by 50 Percent

As the presidential campaign continues to grind along, we wait for one of the candidates to address the key issue that faces our country in the next couple of decades or more.

But neither Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama nor John McCain has stepped forward with a plan to reduce America's dependence on oil -- specifically, foreign oil -- not a real plan, anyway.

In his short but eventful term, President John F. Kennedy acknowledged that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space with its Sputnik satellite. At a time when the Cold War was still raging, fear and anxiety raged in the U.S. If the Soviets controlled space, it would only be a matter of time before they would control the Earth, the conventional wisdom said. In 1961, this was very serious business. The country was in the midst of Sputnik-phobia.


Kennedy reacted with the leadership quality that made him a legend in his tragically short term:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

Of course, the goal was achieved by NASA Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. But it wouldn't have been possible without leadership from both the president and from Congress. Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, understood both the strategic and the morale importance of the U.S. being the first country to achieve a successful trip to the Moon and back.

We're at another one of those key turning points in our history -- one of those handful of moments that you look back on over the course of a few hundred years and realize that a different decision or a different strategy could have made things very, very different.

Americans are watching gasoline prices going up and up and up on nearly a daily basis. At the time of this writing, the average across the U.S. was around $4 per gallon. The president and the Congress?s reaction to date have been akin to Alfred E. Newman: "What, me worry?" The president keeps telling us that yes, things are tough, and we?ll have to buckle down to get through it. Congress is talking about suing the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to force it to bring oil prices down.

Going through international and world courts, that suit would probably see the light of day in about 10 years. In the meantime, the industrial revolutions in China and India will continue, and the demand for oil will continue to grow in those two heavily populated countries as more and more people start to need and be able to afford cars.

Our country?s current leadership is completely asleep at the switch, which is why someone has to come forth and make a Kennedy-like declaration -- something like this:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the year 2020, of reducing our use of and dependence upon oil by 50 percent. No single undertaking in the history of our nation will affect as many people individually as will this one. No single undertaking will tip the balance of commerce as much as this one will. No single undertaking will leave as many of our citizens having to make life-altering changes. But no single undertaking means as much to our continued survival as not only a leader of the free world, but as an independent, self-sustaining nation, as this one.

"Through very well-meaning actions, we have effectively put ourselves out of the oil production business in the Gulf of Mexico and in Alaska. We could wage political wars and battles to reopen and start drilling in areas where we know oil exists, but we would be merely delaying the inevitable. The day will come, sooner or later, when our insatiable appetite for oil will be our doom. Our economy -- already leveraged to the hilt by governments, businesses and individuals -- will collapse under the stress of out-of-control inflation, spurred by oil prices we can?t control. Without an undeterred effort to reduce our oil consumption, this outcome is a certainty. We don?t know when -- only that it will happen -- sort of like our own fate as individuals on this Earth.

"To meet this goal, we will grant preferred status and tax incentives to companies -- both currently in the auto industry and not in the auto industry -- that will work to develop technology to produce autos that will operate on clean, renewable, non-fossil fuels such as hydrogen, water, solar -- and let's allow our imaginations to run wild on what else might be used.
"This endeavor will require the country's most creative minds to lead us to the solutions we need. The job of those of us elected to lead this country will be to allow those solutions to occur. There are no certainties, other than these: there will be timelines and deadlines to be met, and there will be time periods when our economy will struggle mightily as we move toward self-sufficiency, lower prices and less anxiety over how much it will cost us to get from here to there. Make no mistake, the costs will be high, but the results will drive this country?s continued survival and success for the next few hundred years.

"Nothing this generation will undertake will have more impact on the future of the nation and of the world than this project, and we must succeed."

Why haven't any of our candidates made this kind of statement? First and foremost, common political theory would tell you that anyone who tells people that things have to get worse before they will get better doesn?t have a chance to get elected ? or re-elected. It's very scary, but it seems that is the reason that the most important task of our country?s history to date is getting swept under the rug.

The United States needs a leader, not a popularity contest winner, and it doesn't matter from which party he or she hails. We hope that one of the current candidates -- or perhaps one as yet unannounced -- will hear our plea.