America’s dangerous oil addiction

Did you hear? Gas prices could hit $4 per gallon this summer, according to the U.S. Department… Did you hear? Gas prices could hit $4 per gallon this summer, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Add in the sweltering summer heat and Americans’ inexplicable love for enormous gas-guzzling vehicles, and we’re looking at one unhappy nation.

In other news, the government is trying to solve this problem in the most inefficient way possible. Again.

Keeping in tradition (another thing we love in America) with our long history of concessions, special exceptions and bad decisions when it comes to getting oil, the government is attempting – yet again – to soothe relations with the crazy and ethically questionable dictator of instead of investing money in alternative energy sources and attempting to finally make a clean break from our dependence on oil-producing countries.

This month’s lucky OPEC member of choice is everyone’s favorite South American dictator: Hugo Chavez.

“Elected” as president of Venezuela in 1998, Chavez is a 54-year-old firecracker and two-time winner of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. He has been accused of multiple counts of election fraud in his own country and others, using his power and oil money to seat political allies in the neighboring countries of Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua and is often likened to Louis XIV of France (ouch).

Chavez also allegedly once referred to President George W. Bush as “the devil.”

Despite these claims, the U.S. government has played nice with Chavez, offering up the lack of hard evidence in proving any of the above allegations as an excuse to continue importing approximately 12 percent of our oil from Chavez’s sticky fingers, making Venezuela our third largest source of petroleum.

But last week, ironically amid a bout of record-breaking gas prices, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials have authenticated a collection of computer files “closely tying Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez to communist rebels seeking to topple Colombia’s government.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you hard evidence.

This puts the United States in an extremely delicate position. The documents report that Chavez offered to arm the guerillas with rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles, which in the classic definition of the term, makes the Venezuelan government a state sponsor of terrorism.

Normally, as in the case of Cuba and North Korea, this would call for U.S. sanctions against the country and a ban on its exports.

But an embargo on Venezuelan oil might hurt the United States as much or more than it hurts Chavez, especially with gas prices already climbing to new and ridiculously high rates. It could effectively throw the U.S. economy into chaos, and it goes without saying that the American people won’t be happy when they have to pay $5-plus for a gallon of gas. Not happy at all.

Forget about Columbia, the U.S. government will have to worry about a revolt within its own borders (most likely led by angry Nascar dads), instead.

Yet taking no action against the Venezuelan government makes us hypocrites. To punish one country for aiding terrorists and not another only weakens our international position (not that the rest of the world currently views us as the beacon of fairness and justice that we purport ourselves to be).

It’s a lose-lose scenario and, unfortunately, nothing new. The government has had to pander to the whims of oil-exporting countries since its introduction to the mass market more than a century ago.

The only feasible long-term solution is to move away from oil consumption, and therefore the importation of petroleum, altogether. Though there has been progress in recent years, we are still an outrageously oil-dependent nation. We need to invest in alternative energy research, instead. Environmentally, this research is pivotal. It makes for potentially cleaner air and works to mitigate global warming. But politically, it’s just as important. Only when we can produce our own energy source, and at a reasonable price, can the United States’ government administer truly objective foreign policies (well, more objective), something we Americans have always prided ourselves on.

This conflict with Chavez might be a blessing in disguise. If the U.S. government finally mans up and imposes sanctions on Venezuela, it might just prove the catalyst that provokes serious reconsideration of our current energy policies.

E-mail Molly at mog4@pitt.edu.