We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil every year, but we only have reserves, including that which has not been pumped, of about 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world.
I talk about reducing our dependence on foreign oil. If we're buying electricity from a solar-thermal plant in Tijuana, I'm not sure we should say that's evil. If we are buying wind power from Alberta, I don't have a huge objection to that.
We clearly need to break our addiction on Saudi Arabian oil that is a security threat to the United States.
So we are now still dependent on foreign oil, have a problem with global warming, and are losing jobs rapidly to the Japanese in fuel-efficient vehicles as a result of that very shortsighted progress.
If we had continued making progress at the rate we were during the Carter administration, we would be free of oil imports from Saudi Arabia today.
The need to help spread democracy and the ability to do that will be much greater if we break this addiction to oil, which gives the oil princes and sultans the power in the Mideast.