Time the truth is told to America

With just under two months to go before the US electorate decides on their next president, we can expect many wild accusations and barbs being made by the candidates. Aside from the usual smears on their political beliefs, morals and characters, which now seem par for the course in any election campaign and upon which media gorges itself into a frenzy, there is a canard that should be put to bed quickly, in the hope it will not unduly influence voters.

Both the Democrat and Republican candidates have claimed they want to achieve less US reliance on foreign oil. One side alleges it can be done by destroying the pristine wilderness of environmental reserves; the other says he would direct the "full resources" of government towards promoting renewable energy sources, investing $150 billion (Dh550 billion) over a 10-year period" - the specifics of which remain equally vague.

However, in typical fashion for politicians, they dodge the main issue and prefer instead to impute that all the problems the US now faces are because of the country's need to import foreign oil (at market prices dictated by a cartel of Middle East companies, they say). US politicians would have the electorate believe that the reason they pay so much for gas at the pumps, for food in the market, for utilities for the home is because some foreigners are holding the US economy to ransom. And all this can be overcome by either ruining the environment or pouring good money after bad in the fanciful idea that some as yet unknown alternative system of energy will be found.

Americans are fond of saying "no one wants to talk about the horse in the parlour". True. No one, especially politicians, will go for the jugular and tell it like it really is. And the reason for that is because by stating the obvious, a politician would not only become extremely unpopular, but certainly would not get into the White House. In fact, he or she would be unlikely to make governor, let alone rise further.

The unpopular "horse in the parlour" is, of course, consumption. Americans are too greedy and used to being so. (I am not talking about the obese and morbidly obese - you can draw your own conclusions if you want to.) Americans are used to cheap petrol and cheap energy. The recent, and continuing, shocks they received from the escalating price of petrol have made many, but not enough, people change their ways of travellling. But gas-guzzlers still exist aplenty, driven by those who believe it is for everyone else to conserve energy, not them.

When I was in the US some time back, I was talking to a group of Americans about conserving energy, as in electricity, because the state was suffering due to outages as power companies were unable to meet increasing with demand. No one in the group thought it worthwhile switching off unnecessary heating, cooling or lighting, on the basis that "they pay for it and they can afford it". My argument that such thinking was short-lived as the time would come when utility providers could not meet demand, fell on deaf ears. It was as if I was talking in a foreign tongue. The unanimous opinion was that it was for their neighbour to make concessions, not for them.

Now, such thinking has caught up with the public, and they are beginning to realise that perhaps oil is not an inexhaustible supply. And especially so, claim those politicians who sing the tunes they believe the public want to hear, if the US has to rely on the diktats of foreign oil suppliers

What US politicians, at any level, will not tell the electorate, is to use less energy and conserve resources. Over the years successive US governments have done their very best to ensure that supplies remain constant and true to the American belief that cheap oil is a God-given right. To maintain this fallacy, the US has had to twist and turn its foreign policy so it always keeps on the right side of major suppliers of oil, thereby perpetuating the myth that cheap oil is attainable.

But Americans are realising otherwise. They are coming down to earth with a hard bump as pocketbooks become affected by price increases. Yet presidential and vice-presidential candidates persist with the canard that dependency on foreign oil is bankrupting the US, when it is failed domestic policies, combined with fighting foreign wars - instigated by the US - that are the real reasons.