IHE oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the violent Israeli commandeering of Gaza-bound relief ship in international waters –usually called piracy — are seemingly unrelated.
But they could present an opportunity to President Barack Obama, and to the US in general, to change direction. It’s all about oil.
The US props up several autocratic Arab governments (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt) because staying on side with them helps it ensure its supply of oil.
For separate electoral reasons the US gives about $2.5 billion a year to Israel in military aid. Without it, the Israeli army would have far less capacity for the violence we have seen in the past few weeks and before, but the Jewish lobby in the US is too powerful for any president or member of congress to question or move to end the aid.
But events like the piracy off the Gaza could and should change that. Indeed, sentiment would have changed even more if Americans had been among the casualties.
The US aid to Israel and the autocratic Arab regimes, in addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a deadly combination. It inflames radical Muslims. It stokes the underlying causes of terrorism.
Without dependency on oil, the US would not feel it necessary to prop up autocracy, and democracy might have a chance in the Arab world. It might mean an initial period of radical upheaval, but after a time, when the likes of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, have to look after roads, schools and hospitals, things settle down, just as they did with the IRA and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland.
The key, therefore, is oil and the US weaning itself off it, for its own good and for the good of the planet.
This is where the gulf spill enters the argument.
Americans are rightly horrified at the pollution. But it is a good illustration of what oil is doing to the planet. So far about 300 million litres of oil has spilled into the gulf waters. It seems a lot, but it is just one tenth of the US daily consumption of oil.
Sure, the regular daily consumption is different from an uncontrolled spill which splatters crude oil on water, beaches and birds. Nonetheless, it goes dangerously, if silently, into the atmosphere.
Its very volume makes it more deadly than all the land and sea spillages of crude oil in history combined.
If Obama could use recent events as a catalyst to end military aid to Israel, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan (both lost causes), and tax carbon, the world would be a far more livable place in the middle of this century.
The Middle East tension can only get worse when you add water to the things being fought over. And climate change will make water scarcer. This is because in a warmer world there will be fewer, smaller glaciers. Glaciers release water slowly, which make them a reliable, steady source of water for farmers and other in habitants downstream. Take them away, and water security disappears.
Also a hotter atmosphere contains more water and more energy, so you get more heavy rain and less light rain, increasing floods and adding to water management difficulties.
Yes, we need a great big new tax on carbon. It is no longer a question of is the planet warming. It has already warmed and the effects are already with us. The planet has already been irreversibly changed.
Since the Industrial Revolution the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone from 250 parts per million to 390. The best science suggests that beyond 350 parts per million the stable climate upon which civilisation depends will be lost and the planet will be irreversibly changed.
Even under any of the various targets posed in international forums, expressed as percentages of 1990 or 2000 levels, carbon will still be poured into the atmosphere. It is not as if the climate was fine in 1990 so if we produce the same amount of carbon as then we will be OK. We will still be adding carbon to an atmosphere that has already reached the limit of stable climate.
If politicians like Obama can’t seize on events like the gulf spill and the Israeli piracy to change the ways of the world’s biggest economy by far, the prospects are fairly bleak.
They are made more bleak if other countries, like Australia, can abandon “the greatest moral challenge of our time” because of the demands of some short-term electoral cycle.
And, remember, that Australia, too, had an oil spill which could have been a catalyst – or in the words of the cliché, a wake-up call — for change.
Some individuals are changing their ways, but most of us won’t do so without major financial incentives – taxes on carbon, subsidies on clean energy and policies to keep population down. These will be much cheaper in the long run, but their short-term costs make them too hard for politicians facing election in the short term.
It would be better if behaviour were changed in an orderly way by government action rather than in a disruptive way.
Sadly, the disruptive way is how it is likely to be. If politicians will not take action to protect the future, you can rest assured that insurance companies will not be so stupid. Insurance companies try to assess future risk by looking at past events and patterns. But the incidence of those events is predicated upon a stable climate.
As it becomes more apparent that the climate is not stable and sea levels rise and floods and storms become more frequent, insurance companies will demand higher premiums, or will not insure at all.
That may become the catalyst for action – by then far too late and far more costly than sensible action now.
The US, and the world, would be a far more secure place if the US drastically cut military spending and used the money to wean itself of oil and coal.
But so far, the passive response to the gulf oil spill and the Israeli piracy has revealed the US Government’s misguided notion of security.
Many Americans thought Obama would be different. But his response to these events suggest not. He should act on these events.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries”.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 12 June 2010.