WASHINGTON, DC – For a book published recently by the Center for Security Policy, Growth Energy Co-Chairman, Gen. Wesley K. Clark (Ret.), authored an essay arguing that our nation’s addiction to foreign oil has led America into an expensive and bloody 30-year campaign to protect our access to oil in the Middle East.
Gen. Clark’s essay, “The World According to Biofuels,” argues that continuing to inject petro-dollars into regions hostile to U.S. interests is costing America dearly in both blood and treasure. He argues that America has the capacity to produce enough ethanol today to break the hold oil – and thereby oil-exporting interests, such as the cartel OPEC – has over the United States.
After the OPEC-driven oil crisis of the 1970s, Gen. Clark writes, the U.S. responded by creating the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force. That task force evolved into the U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations today in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the formation of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which provides military escort to oil-shipping tankers out of the Gulf. America’s dependence on foreign oil has cost the nation more than $7 trillion over that time, Gen. Clark writes.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Ethanol is a viable alternative to oil, and is available today. Grain and cellulosic ethanol “could be used all over the world to help make developing nations energy independent – breaking the yoke of strongmen, rogue nations and cartel-driven energy prices not just on our economy, but on the economies of those nations that are most vulnerable,” Clark writes.
The Center for Security Policy’s recently published anthology Homegrown Defense: Biofuels and National Security is a collection of essays by eminent energy security experts on the role that biofuels can and must play in reducing America’s dependence on oil and the hostile nations that monopolize its production globally. The book explores biofuels as an alternative to the status quo, characterized by key oil-producing nations selectively cutting production to raise prices worldwide, and using the revenues to support terrorism, weapons proliferation, and other threats to international stability.
“We are grateful to Gen. Wesley Clark for his important contribution to this volume. In light of Gen. Clark’s previous service to our nation as NATO Supreme Allied Commander, his insights on the viability of biofuels and the advantages they offer from a national security perspective constitute a critical part of this work,” said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy.
Homegrown Defense is available for purchase at Amazon.com.
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About Growth Energy
Growth Energy is a group committed to the promise of agriculture and growing America’s economy through cleaner, greener energy. Growth Energy members recognize America needs a new ethanol approach. Through smart policy reform and a proactive grassroots campaign, Growth Energy promotes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, expanding the use of ethanol in gasoline, decreasing our dependence on foreign oil, and creating American jobs at home. More information can be found at GrowthEnergy.org.