War will cost US tax payers more than $1 Trillion before Bush leaves office.
Iraqi insurgents are earning more than $100 Million per year selling oil on black market.
Iran whom the US sees as its biggest threat is still earning $60 billion a year in Oil exports.

My Questions:-

1) Would the almost $1 Trillion spent so far on the war have better been spent developing renewable environmentally friendly sources of energy so as the West could do away with Middle eastern Oil starving Arab economies into submission?

Without a doubt yes. This technology, say hydrogen for instance would be a large sell on a large scale also to various nations that also purchase or rely on oil. We can see easily that people with oil have strings they can pull and currently a practically infinite supply of money. More often then not people forget that one of the best cases of action in regards to the U.N working together to save the day was to kick saddam out of Kuwait, saddam was going for the oil because he knew it would bring in money and of course power. At the end of WW2 many of the German operations were built simply around attempting to gain more of this substance, Japan also suffered greatly because of lack of oil, in which a species of plant went extinct in Japan in order that there planes could operate. Lastly again our industrial societies are dependent thusly we are dependent on hydrocarbon usage. Our big plan basically is to destroy Americas environment so that we an lessen our addiction to such. The problem is way out of hand but for whatever reasons we simply allow it to go unchecked while government scientists get strong-armed into silence. The future of fossil fuel dependence is only going to increase the various stresses these problems already inflict on the world at large. 1 trillion dollars could have basically saved the world a few times over I am sure in regards to actually developing an alternative to this brewing nightmare.

Would the almost $1 Trillion spent so far on the war have better been spent developing renewable environmentally friendly sources of energy so as the West could do away with Middle eastern Oil starving Arab economies into submission?

I don't know about submission, but yeah, the money has been wasted. Environmentalists like Amory Lovins have been warning about this situation since the 1970s, but not enough people were listening. Many were arguing that war is just a cost of doing business, which assumes we do business as we always have been doing. The counter argument was that we can change the way we do business.

Looks like it had to come to this. We were talking last night about how humans have to engage in war because war is built into the species. So, right now I'm not very optimistic about learning the lessons involved. Hopefully, the damage hasn't been beyond repair. A trillion USD isn't as much as it used to be, and the alternative energy ideas are getting some traction within business circles.

BTW, Iran is not an Arabic country. It's Persian, as in the Persian Gulf, so I'll use the ME region instead.

If oil were to become a cheap commodity due to a sharp drop in demand because the world goes to alternative energy sources, would that starve the ME region's economies? Losing that asset certainly wouldn't help any, but the ME economies must have more complexity than being based on a single commodity. The region might be humbled though, and that might work out. Maybe a spirit of cooperation will develop, something like the EU.

That's my hopeful side this morning. I'm not so hopeful that going to alternatives will make the GWoT go away, as there's a huge element of insanity with terrorism. At least we don't have to deal with serial suicidal bombers.

I dispute the I trillion – want to show us some backup? And does this include the “pork” added to bills to support the war such as what the Dems have added to this last bill? You would think that the party that claims they will “clean up” Washington would a least refrain for a few months with this type of nonsense.


In any case the argument is not valid. Every year since 1974 we could have allocated money for energy independence and have failed. We could have used the money Bill spent in Bosnia, or we could use the money devoted to “pork” form both parties. The point is we have the resources and have not had the will. The “green” folks have kept us from developing our own oil so we are totally dependant on the ME oil. And to safeguard that we go to war as we did with the first Gulf War which led to this current war.

Would the almost $1 Trillion spent so far on the war have better been spent developing renewable environmentally friendly sources of energy so as the West could do away with Middle eastern Oil starving Arab economies into submission?

Hindsight will always provide a clearer, “better” way to approach any given problem. So yes if we had implemented more conservation during the Carter era we’d be further along the path of energy independence. The problem was people could not convincingly prove energy depletion was imminent back then and they can now.

The manner in which you have framed the question works around the theory of only one nation driving demand and only one that can alter markets. That is no longer the case with respect to China and India.

Without getting into a major monologue, the best we can hope for at this point is to take out the instability premium by not starting more wars. Iraq today places between 12-15 dollars a barrel on shipping and security costs. More wars will not alleviate this condition.

By following this path we can exert the following pressures.

- One, we could bring down the market enough which would put pressure on non-convention sources such as tar sands and south American heavy crude, challenging their profitability and pulling some volume off the market.

- Two, as you alluded to, we can take out some of the profitability of populist leaders and make nationalization a more cumbersome path.

- Three, we would have a greater opportunity to channel capital into green projects. IE take some funding from the war and place it in developing technologies. Note that since this war is fully financed through debt certificates and not savings I doubt equal amounts would be placed in development.

But don’t delude yourself, people don’t depend on the American customer like they have in the past. You won’t threaten producers by pretending to take your business elsewhere.