BIKE: Oil prices and foreign policy--point-of-view of the "Geo-Greens"

[Thorne]

Subject:  Oil prices and foreign policy--point-of-view of the "Geo-Greens"  
 
NY Times' Thomas Friedman, who declares "I am a geo-green":
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/opinion/30friedman.html?ex=1264827600&en=c237e059d55c8beb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

<snip>

The geo-greens believe that, going forward, if we put all our focus on
reducing the price of oil - by conservation, by developing renewable and
alternative energies and by expanding nuclear power - we will force more
reform [in the Middle East] than by any other strategy. You give me
$18-a-barrel oil and I will give you political and economic reform from
Algeria to Iran. All these regimes have huge population bubbles and too few
jobs. They make up the gap with oil revenues. Shrink the oil revenue and they
will have to open up their economies and their schools and liberate their
women so that their people can compete. It is that simple.

By refusing to rein in U.S. energy consumption, the Bush team is not only
depriving itself of the most effective lever for promoting internally driven
reform in the Middle East, it is also depriving itself of any military
option.
As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, points out,
given today's tight oil market and current U.S. consumption patterns, any
kind
of U.S. strike on Iran, one of the world's major oil producers, would send
the
price of oil through the roof, causing real problems for our economy. "Our
own
energy policy has tied our hands," Mr. Haass said.

The Bush team's laudable desire to promote sustained reform in the Middle
East
will never succeed unless it moves from neocon to geo-green.