Excerpts: Professor Michael Klare, Beyond Oil keynote speaker, May 14, 2005 - Seattle

(The Beyond Oil event was organized by WPSR and Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation)

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“Oil dependency is the crucial pivot of American foreign policy and military policy.”

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“There is increasing competition from China and Russia to also be part of this. So Russia and China are copying our behavior, also sending troops and establishing bases and providing military assistance to the countries they want to control or rely on for energy.

So now in the Caspian Sea you have a three way struggle for geopolitical influence that involves military advisors and arms shipments from the three great powers of the 21^st Century. This is an exceedingly dangerous game that they’re playing.”

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“It’s not just an economic or environmental crisis, it’s also a moral and ethical crisis. This is the part that I hope we will make the centerpiece of how we approach the larger public – because I think when we approach them on that grounds, maybe they can grasp the essence of the magnitude of the problem we face.

It is an ethical crisis first of all because we are increasing the price in blood, namely young men and women in uniform are being put into harm’s way around the world to protect the flow of oil so that Americans can drive vastly fuel-inefficient vehicles. We are sacrificing their lives so that people can drive SUVs and Hummers. I think that’s fundamentally immoral and unpatriotic and we should be out there saying that.

Second, the image of Bush and Abdullah Aziz embracing should be made the poster child of this immoral, unconscionable marriage between this democracy – to the extent that we are – and a feudal monarchy more corrupt and more oppressive than the monarchy we fought a revolution against over 200 years ago. This is obscene. And we should be very angry and out there about this marriage. It should end. That is the second moral dimension.

The third is the environmental. You grasp the fact, I believe, that we’re destroying the environment by our addiction to petroleum. And until we conquer that addiction – and it is an addiction—we have no hope of reversing the environmental trends that are going to destroy the planet for future generations.

And this leads to my final point, that all of this is essentially a form of warfare against future generations. This whole Bush/Cheney energy strategy of perpetuating-- of patching up -- this obsolete machine of oil, of petroleum, of automobiles, of highways, through federal subsidies and all of the rest – is all to maintain for another decade, maybe, this way of life for another generation at most. There is no way that this way of life could last beyond ten years, or fifteen years out. And it is going to be more expensive -- as you know already to maintain it now it is beginning to pinch. Ten years, fifteen years from now it will be impossible to do this. There won’t be enough oil, it will be much too expensive.

And the economic burden of perpetuating it -- the military forces and the subsidies—are going to fall not on our shoulders but on our children’s and grandchildren’s shoulders. They are going to have more debt to carry, a weaker energy system, and in the meantime, we are not doing the things that are necessary to leave them with a habitable planet and with the technology that will allow them to enjoy even something like our way of life without further environmental damage. And that, I think is the worst crime of all: we are robbing the planet for our benefit – meaning the benefit of Americans—at the expense of our children and grandchildren. And that, I think, should be the centerpiece of our work.”

Transcribed by Martin Fleck