We need leadership NOW

Thomas Friedman has written an op-ed in the 6 Jan NYT, The New Red, White and Blue (requires $ubscription to read the entire article).

While much of it contains the ranting that drives me nuts about peak-oilers, I definitely concur with the following:

As we enter 2006, we find ourselves in trouble, at home and abroad. We are in trouble because we are led by defeatists - wimps, actually... when it comes to what is actually the most important issue in U.S. foreign and domestic policy today - making ourselves energy efficient and independent, and environmentally green - they ridicule it as something only liberals, tree-huggers and sissies believe is possible or necessary. Sorry, but being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do...

No matter what happens in Iraq, we cannot dry up the swamps of authoritarianism and violent Islamism in the Middle East without also drying up our consumption of oil - thereby bringing down the price of crude. A democratization policy in the Middle East without a different energy policy at home is a waste of time, money and, most important, the lives of our young people...

We need a president and a Congress with the guts... to also impose a gasoline tax and inspire conservation at home. That takes a real energy policy with long- term incentives for renewable energy - wind, solar, biofuels - rather than the welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests that masqueraded last year as an energy bill...

Tags: peakoil, peak-oil, peak_oil,