Oil consumption, braveness and ambition

13 mei 2008

Today’s Financial Times has an article on John McCain’s ambitions with respect to climate change (“McCain vows US will lead on climate change”). His campaign has identified climate change as one of the policy areas it will use to differentiate from president Bush. Friends of the Earth do not hesitate to question the credibility of McCain’s promise. And among Republicans there seems to be a lot of scepticism about (the way to deal with) climate change. There will be more hurdles for McCain. While he wants to avoid (Kyoto like) “dead end diplomacy” he wants China, India and other developing countries to be part of any successor of Kyoto. I’m a bit curious about the kind of diplomacy he is looking for to realise this part of his ambition.
But McCain should not worry too much about rethoric and diplomacy at this point. He (and the other candidates!) should worry about and focus on new solutions for energy security. A nice start would be to read today’s opinion of Gideon Rachman’s in the same paper (“The oily truth about America’s foreign policy”). He elaborates on the growing oil consumption in the US (and emerging economies), on growing oil imports in the US as percentage of total oil consumption. No surprising conclusion there: America is still completely dependant on oil.
Rachman states: “The only plausible routes to “energy security” lie at home in the US – in the development of new technologies and in a change of lifestyles. Americans may have to drive their cars less. But it will be a brave presidential candidate who says that.”
I believe it is hard to see an alternative to braveness and ambition.
To conclude it is fair to say that this is equally true for companies. In this respect it is interesting to note that a majority of Rockefeller Family members - the oldest continuous shareholders in Exxon Mobil Corporation - publicly called on ExxonMobil to pursue renewables. To be continued.

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