Let me make it clear. Bush Jr. was a rotten President, arguably the worst in American History. So no, I did not have a lot of good things, or even neutral things to say about him when he was President of the United States. So I want you to fully understand the impact of this when I say it. When gas prices rose under the Bush administration, I did not blame the Bush administration and would tell that to anyone who would listen to me.
Why not? The country was being run by two oil executives who clearly had the interests of the industry at heart more than they did the American people. They started, under false pretenses, an unnecessary and immoral war in Iraq that helped destabilize the oil markets. They had no intention of using federal reserves or price controls or any other domestic measures. So why didn't I blame them?
Two reasons. First the price of oil is largely determined by speculators. We've handed over the oil markets to gamblers who've helped to destroy every market they've touched. When you turn investment into a casino, these things happen. And you have players who try to cash in on volatility no matter what it costs the rest of us. This is what happened to the sports card industry and comic market in the 90s, the tech bubble, the real estate bubble, the derivative scam, etc. Bush Jr. encouraged this environment but he didn't start it. Speculation is sometimes created by actual events (hurricanes, wars, refinery fires and shutdowns), but it is taken to greater extremities and wilder swings because of it.
The second and more important reason for this is the nation's original sin, which dates back to the late seventies. A moment where had Americans reacted differently, the entirety of human history could have been changed. And that moment was President's Carter's so-called "malaise speech". He laid it on the line the future direction we had to take to survive, that we had to turn our backs on oil, learn to conserve, and develop alternate energy sources. But instead of endorsing this message and taking us on a road of energy independence and wiser energy use, we turned our backs on him. We voted in a President who, amiable old man that he was, ignored energy entirely and told us we were Americans by God, and we didn't need to change our consumption at all, didn't need that newfangled stuff, and we could keep right on chugging on our giant cars and spitting out pollutants, as we head towards that shining city on a hill (albeit a little hard to see through the smog).
We've had opportunities to turn towards a better course. In the 90s, Al Gore raised the idea of a fifty cent gas tax that would have helped develop mass transit and fuel alternatives. Last decade, scientists laid very clear the scientific certainty of where we were headed with man-made climate change and global warming. And each passing year, the damage caused by our use becomes more and more apparent, and harder and harder to deny. If President Obama has a flaw or responsibility, it is in not doing more to help us grasp this fact.
So who do I blame? I blame ourselves, each and every one of us who insist that lower gas prices are more important than the very future of this planet. And every time we are faced with this reality, we turn our backs to it.
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