What a surprise Fox News lies.

The other night I was enjoying a fine dinner with my family, it included hamburgers, and a mixed salad with vegetables from the local CSA we are a part of. However, simultaneously, the loud squawking on our kitchen tv disturbed me. I couldn't help, but stare and intently listen as Bill O'Reilly and some uber woman (fox news seems to have an army of gorgeous, hypermasculine blonds) debated over the United States' energy problems. Both agreed that the United States must become energy independent. The woman argued that this could be accomplished by drilling in ANWR and the, according to her, abundant, untapped oil fields under the Dakotas. O'Reilly, on the otherhand, argued that energy independence could only be acheived through increased ethanol production. "Look at Brazil!!!" he reiterated. Both of their arguments, of course, were crucially flawed for similar reasons. ANWR and the supposed oil in the Dakotas cannot meet our current rate of consumption. Increasing production of ethanol derived from corn would, and has, destabilized our food production. Furthermore, our immense output of corn is greatly dependent on chemical fertilizers derived from fossil fuels, which, as expected, O'Reilly failed to mention. Of course, future production may increase with improved technologies, ethanol derived from algaes, ethanol derived from cellulose compounds, etc. These were barely mentioned.

And looking at other segments and news programs on Fox, we see analysts constantly blame our recent high oil prices on oil speculation in futures markets. Looking at some of the data and arguments, this very well may be the case. On June 10th, OPEC's Secretary General held a news conference in which he appealed for calm, yet also seemed to accuse speculators, stating that, "current world consumption of oil at 87 million bpd is far exceeded by the 'paper market' for oil, which equals about 1.36 billion bpd, or more than 15 times the actual market demand" (wikipedia). Again, this may be the case, but should we divert our time to cracking down on "speculation" when the real problem is our dependence on a finite resource? Oil, at least from a human perspective, will deplete; it is unsustainable. What's even worse, and laughable, during the news conference OPEC's Secretary General tried to comfort us with the following words, "The situation [oil speculation] is unbearable as far as we are concerned. I want to say, there is no shortage now and in the future."

The Bush administration (in many ways represented by Fox News) and the Saudis are making a concerted effort to divert our attention from more viable solutions; they are groups who have a vested interest, and power obtained from, oil production. They lie and they misinform. No one really knows, minus the Saudis themselves, the quantity of oil that country truly possesses. For example, somehow, during the 1980s the Saudis reported a 100% increase in their oil reserves. Why would they do this? Did they really find more oil under all that sand and rock? Working off much of this information, the Bush administration has released consecutive energy reports greatly underestimating the annual price of oil. The administration has been an impervious bulwark towards positive change, as we have witnessed. And why has Dick Cheney been swashbuckling about preventing China from constructing oil fields off the coast of Cuba, when such a deal between the two nations was never even completed? Fox News has been the media arm for this administration and a pigheaded conservatism that is both detrimental to ourselves and the world. Like so many have said before, the United States needs to turn away from oil consumption and research viable, "green" replacements. Or we need to, slowly, change our lifestyle, our culture, and our agricultural system. I can't wait for the end of the error, but for now, I'm agnostic towards science. As I said in my second post, I'm becoming Amish.