FREEDOM FROM OIL: How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction (McGraw Hill, 2008), by David Sandalow.
BOOK REVIEW by Sam Carana
In his book, Freedom from Oil, Sandalow gets a lot of things right. As a former White House staffer, Sandalow is trained to identify problems and make recommendations. In this case, Sandakow identifies the problem as the US addiction to oil and the US dependence on oil imports. In parts of his book, Sandalow also identifies the best remedy: a tax on gasoline, combined with tax credits and rebates. More specifically, Sandalow proposes an extra tax of 10 cents per gallon on gasoline for five years.
All this makes perfect sense. Where things get shaky is where Sandalow gives selective support; Sandalow supports cars that run on ethanol, and plug-in hybrid cars that can run on both ethanol and electricity; Sandalow wants government to buy plug-in hybrids and he wants oil companies to install an ethanol pump in at least 50% of their stations; Sandalow proposes tax credits for ethanol and for electric cars (up to $8,000 for the purchase the first one million); Clearly, Sandolow strongly supports ethanol and plug-in hybrids that take ethanol. But he could instead have given more support to all-electric cars and left the door open for hydrogen.
Sandalow further proposes a health plan for retired staff of companies that invest in oil-saving technology. Sandolow supports mass urban transit systems, but is silent on deregulating taxi services and on supporting communities where people can walk to work. Sandalow welcomes telecommuting, but fails to mention homeschooling.
Why is Sandalow so selective? Global warming is written all over the book and Sandalow proposes to fund research (including $400 million for clean coal), yet he fails to support solar and wind power. Surplus electricity from wind and solar could resolve Sandalow's concern that hydrogen was too expensive. Finally, Sandalow wants most of the proceeds from the extra gasoline tax to go directly to poorer families, which isn't as effective as a FeeBate that uses all proceeds to fund rebates.
Why didn't Sandalow widen his proposal to a tax on all fossil fuels, with proceeds used to support local supply of better alternatives, including solar and wind power? Market mechanisms could then sort out what technologies constituted the better alternatives; government could set the terms, such as that technologies should be clean and safe, while market mechanisms could sort out what technology works best where and what would be the most economic solutions.
In the introduction, Sandalow actually says that his book should be seen as an attempt to grapple with the problems. This admission reveals Sandalow's biggest strength and achievement; he identifies issues and policies, while going a long way to explain how he reached certain conclusions, in the process adding a wealth of details, links and ideas. By spelling things out in this way, Sandalow's book makes a tremendous contribution to the debate.
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Comments: 18
I hope that David addresses some of your questions on this thread.
Taxation is in a sense a "purer" solution than most. If you gradually raise taxes on gasoline (and they are absurdly low right now, only around 10 to 15% of the pump price)) then the marketplace will notice that other alternatives will gain pricing advantage and move accordingly. I cannot understand why so many Americans fail to understand this.
Good review.
Blessings,
Rene A.
Read the entire novel here on Gather where I have published it or, without those Gather ads at:
http://www.unc.edu/~mason/hand.html
I saw a good presentation by Sen. Kerry last night on C-Span, in which he discussed the Bali conference on global warming. But even Kerry leaned pretty heavily on "clean coal" or "carbon sequestration". It seems that even the democrats don't understand that renewables are fix for the climate problem.
I guess you haven't noticed - the nation is already going bankrupt.
Jean: "We already have a 200 year supply of oil."
I guess that's why we've bought $2.2 Trillion worth of oil from the mideast since the 1970s, and are now spending hundreds of billions of dollars (not to mention the lives) there "to protect our vital national interests in the region."
But did you know, Jean, that wind energy in the Dakotas alone could produce enough hydrogen to fuel every transportation vehicle in this nation?
Winning the Oil Endgame (p.240)
jJ apparently wouldn't want Americans to have the jobs or wealth that such an energy infrastructure would create. He'd rather the U.S. go bankrupt, protecting the oil supply.
"Once more we face the vulnerability of our oil supply to political disturbances. Three times in the past thirty years (1973, 1978, and 1990) oil price spikes caused by Middle East crises helped throw the U.S. economy into recession. Coincident disruption in Venezuela and Russia adds to unease, let alone prices, in 2004. And the surging economies of China and India are contributing significantly to demand. But the problem far transcends economics and involves our national security. How many more times must we be hit on the head by a two-by-four before we do something decisive about this acute problem?"
George P. Schultz, Former Secretary of Labor and Treasury, Former Director of OMB (Nixon administration); Former Secretary of State (Reagan administration)
Shale holds much promise for American companies, because it is abundant and most of it is found in the United States. A Rand study says that the bounty could fuel American cars and homes for more than 400 years, if shale could meet a quarter of current American demand of about 20 million barrels a day. SOURCE
"Shale oil suffers from many of the same extraction problems as oil sands, and more. Shale oil is not oil; its kerogen. Kerogen must be processed into useful oil products at high energy and economic costs. Further, the processing creates vast volumes of waste materials and requires large volumes of water. This fuel is not feasible except for emergency military or other uses where cost and energy balance are not significant considerations!"
"...the abundant energy in direct sunlight, wind, waves, falling water and biomass. These energy resources are the only oil replacements with enough available volume to replace oil permanently. But even here there are obstacles to clear; but at least the effort will not be wasted or short lived. And the advantages are well worth the effort. The volume of energy here could provide long term energy security."
"Each day earth receives more solar energy than all the energy that was ever contained in all the oil that has ever been burned (14.7 x 10 18 BTU) . Nature stores vast amounts of this energy in wind, waves, and biomass and distributes high concentrations of direct solar energy across the sun-scorched deserts of the world. Each of these abundant energy resources presents an opportunity to tap high volumes of clean energy using safe, non-polluting technology. Harvesting less than one fifteenth of one percent of this daily catch of energy and converting it to hydrogen fuel could replace the 30.6 billion barrels (1.3 Trillion gallons or 4.9 Trillion liters) of annual oil consumption."
That's a great link, Steve, thanks for posting that!
http://www.worldenergybill.org/Issue_Briefs/Alternative_Energy_Security.html