President Number Nine

I recently found the following diagram, showing the cost to clean up a ton of leaked/spilled oil:

Clearly, we ought to stop drilling in North America and simply let Africa meet most of our needs. Instead of wasting money trying to clean up our own spills, let's spend the money to contract for Angolan, Congan, Algerian, and Nigerian crude. Let the poorer African continent manage their own spills, as they don't have to spend nearly as much to mange the inevitable spill or two.

You are likely unaware how much of our energy is imported from Africa; likely unaware because you are likely just another dumb fucking American consumer, mindlessly and perpetually consuming energy without any consideration of its source, while bitching about how the price keeps going up, how those "wicked oil companies and their Arab co-conspirators" have jacked up prices. An Arab conspiracy? UhHuh. It's too easy for you to assume that it's just a handful of sand niggers who are making your life more difficult, isn't it. Hey, I only use authentic, American language here on my Monologues.

No, it's not just them Arabs! It's them Africans, too! Another group of people whose values, appearances and customs are different than ours! It's gonna be easy to regard them with the same contempt as we hold today for people in all those wicked Arab oil nations, once we make the natural assumption that African oil witholding has raised our cost of gasoline by a nickel per gallon. Good old American racism will be alive and well. We will be importing 15% of our energy from Africa by the end of this decade, while the last eight presidents have all promised and assured us that we will be energy independent:

• In 1974 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Richard Nixon said, “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.”


• In 1975 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Gerald Ford said, “We must reduce oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of this year and by two million barrels per day by the end of 1977.”


• In 1979 with 40.5% of oil from foreign sources, President Jimmy Carter said, “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 – never.”


• In 1981 with 43.6% of oil from foreign sources, President Ronald Reagan said, “While conservation is worthy in itself, the best answer is to try to make us independent of outside sources to the greatest extent possible for our energy.”


• In 1992 with 47.2% of oil from foreign sources, President George Bush said, “When our administration developed our national energy strategy, three principles guided our policy: reducing our dependence on foreign oil …”


• In 1995 with 49.8% of oil from foreign sources, President Bill Clinton said, “The nation’s growing reliance on imports of oil … threatens the nation’s security … [we] will continue efforts to … enhance domestic energy production.”


• In 2006 with 65.5% of oil from foreign sources, President George W. Bush said, “Breakthroughs … will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”


• In 2009 with 66.2% of oil from foreign sources, President Barack Obama said, “It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”

Not gonna happen in my lifetime, slick. It won't be too long before the combination of a domestic offshore drilling moratorium and the resumption of growth of our Elk Grovian suburban slum will force that percentage north of 70%, 75%, and further.

I will wager a week's paycheck that president number nine, whoever that is, will make the same claim to American consumers and that our dependence at that time will be greater than it is today. I will wager that.

In the meantime, call your senators and representatives in Congress and ask them to save our oceans and our beaches by letting the Africans fuck up their own oceans and their own beaches drilling for oil to meet our wants.