True Cost of Oil

(Picture from here.)

There's an article over at Clean Technica that talks about the cost of oil vs. the cost of renewables. The article is good but it got me thinking-- never a good sign.

Anyway, I started looking for sites that analyzed the total cost of oil. Here was on that was interesting. Go look at the post. It is that author's contention that if all of the effort of protecting the oil, negotiating with the member states, etc., are factored in the yearly cost of depending on oil is 10 trillion dollars.

The US GDP is only 14 trillion and some change.

You can argue with many of the numbers. But it does seem clear that while you can't lay the Afghanistan war on the door of oil, you can and must lay the war in Iraq. We would never have gone in there had it not been for Iraq's oil, regardless of the tyranny of Hussein.

The true cost of oil is far and away much higher than the comparative cost of renewable power. And we don't end up hostage to bizarre thinking in the mid-east.

This is when it comes down to political posturing and hidden agendas. United States security is a conservative issue. They should be leading the charge.

Yet, somehow, the conservative agenda has been hijacked by strange economic forces. You would think that a technological path that points us away from being dependent on other countries would be central to a conservative ideology.

I've said it before. We need a true conservative movement with a positive ideology.
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