ABSTRACT
Nowhere are the dangers of depending on imports of basics more clear than with oil. Over the next decade the United States is expected to import 60 per cent of its oil from foreign suppliers (up from 52 per cent in 1994).3 Just as OPEC’s sudden boycott and price hikes in 1973 and 1979 triggered long queues at gas stations, shortages, inflation, and recessions, our continued dependence threatens economic instability in the years ahead. A 60 per cent import rate means a trade deficit in oil of $100 billion per year.4 Leaving aside the costs of spills from offshore oil-drilling and air pollution from oil-burning, the transportation of oil across oceans poses huge environmental risks to harbor and coastal ecosystems, as well as to the entire oceanic food chain. Another decade of imports will provide $1 trillion of revenue to Persian Gulf states, much of which will be spent on weapons, wars, and saber-rattling that are hardly in the interests of US foreign policy. America is once again in a position where a handful of governments, most of them undemocratic, can bring the nation’s economy to its knees by turning off the spigots.
