Senator John McCain and Barack Obama both speak of the importance to America of self-sufficiency in energy, but they are tackling this issue totally differently.
Obama sees massive investment in new alternative and sustainable energies as an important part of helping build a sustainable world, while also strengthening the US economy. McCain sees developing US-sourced energy as a political objective which would help to reinforce America's global dominance.
There is an obvious danger for both candidates when they say that they want to reduce dependence on Middle Eastern oil: they should avoid the danger of falling into ritual anti-Arab positions, blaming the Arabs and Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) for America's problems. Obama has avoided this so far, but McCain has made some disastrous mistakes.
In McCain's Republican platform, the section on Energy Independence and Security starts with the unbelievable statement that "the ongoing transfer of Americans' wealth to Opec - roughly $700 billion a year - helps underwrite terrorists' operations and creates little incentive for repressive regimes to accept democracy, whether in the Middle East or Latin America.".
McCain's statement is both woefully ignorant and grievously wrong. He is claiming that the money paid by the many companies which buy crude oil from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE, as well as many other Arab oil producers, is being used to support terrorist activities.
He is claiming that the money going to Middle Eastern states supports terror, and in saying this he totally ignores the well-proven track record of the oil-producing Arab states in supporting the US in its efforts to attack the Taliban and Al Qaida.
He is confusing the important goal of improving America's efficient use of energy with xenophobic suspicion of non-Americans. This is particularly dangerous in such an avid supporter of military action and continued US involvement in Iraq. McCain's dangerous rhetoric helps to reinforce the isolationist ignorance towards which America is always in danger of retreating.
McCain would be much better off if he focused on the energy he says he wants to talk about, and did not insult America's allies in the Middle East. But even when he talks about energy, McCain remains stuck in the present. He is a determined supporter of more drilling for more oil, and using more coal; and his few paragraphs on developing alternative energies are only there as a sop to the new world, and not well thought out.
Stark contrast
This is in stark contrast to Obama's position on energy when he also speaks of boosting US production, saying that "we must break our addiction to foreign oil". However, rather than blaming foreign oil producers for terror and suppressing democracy, he outlines a totally different route to stop what he calls 'addiction'.
He keeps the Democrats well within the realms of reason when he calls for fast-track billions of dollars of investment over the next ten years into "a green energy sector that will create five million jobs".
Obama talks of a national programme with many measurable targets, including doubling fuel efficiency, helping manufacturers to meet the new standards, getting 25 per cent of the US's electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and using the power of federal and military purchasing to jump start the new technologies.
Obama's energy plans are clearer and more thought out, and include specific targets and dates. The Democrats would give the government something to work on if Obama gets into power. In addition, his plans have the great virtue of being positive and looking to the future, in contrast to McCain's simplistic desire to blame non-Americans, and Arabs in particular, for the high prices and terror.
It should go without saying that it would be a very good thing if the US improved its use of energy, and at the same time reduced the amount of foreign fuel it needs to import.
America's long love affair with the automobile, cheap petrol, and cheap energy is a serious problem for the whole world, and at some stage Americans will have to learn to pay more and use less fuel. But supporting this is a valid exercise in its own right, and it is a case to be fought on its own merits, and that does not mean taking a position against the oil producing nations.
The more intelligent of the oil producers have already recognised that their crude oil could be better used than just being burnt into smoke and exhaust in millions of cars around the world. Hydrocarbons are a valuable raw stock for hundreds of industrial processes, and will remain so as long as they continue to be found.
Many oil producers such as Abu Dhabi are already looking at how to kick start alternative energy projects on a massive scale, and such research and investment will greatly benefit their economies. The oil producing nations are not against better use of energy, since they have plenty of other markets into which they will continue to sell.
McCain should be looking at how to improve alternatives to hydrocarbons, when he talks of an energy strategy, and he must stop making stupid links between Opec money and terror. Such horrible ignorance has to be rebutted at once and stopped at source.
Great politicians look to the future, and lead people. Obama's ideas on investing in alternative and sustainable energy do exactly that, whereas McCain's ideas on hydrocarbons and coal look backwards, and are also based on false suppositions.
