Så jeg vil tale med jer om olieudslips politiske kemi og hvorfor det er en så utrolig vigtig, lang, olieret, varm sommer, og hvorfor vi må sørge for ikke at blive distraheret. Men før jeg taler om den politiske kemi, bliver jeg faktisk nødt til at tale om olies kemi.
So I'm going to talk to you about you about the political chemistry of oil spills and why this is an incredibly important, long, oily, hot summer, and why we need to keep ourselves from getting distracted. But before I talk about the political chemistry, I actually need to talk about the chemistry of oil.
Det her er et foto fra, da jeg besøgte Prudhoe-bugten i Alaska i 2002 for at se Minerals Management Service teste deres evne til at brænde olieudslip i is. Og det, I ser her, er en lille smule råolie, I ser nogle isflager, og I ser to beholdere med napalm. Napalmen brænder ganske fint. Og dét, der er, er, at olie faktisk er en abstraktion for os amerikanske forbrugere. Vi udgør fire procent af verdens befolkning; vi forbruger 25 procent af verdens olieproduktion. Og vi forstår ikke rigtig, hvad olie er, før vi undersøger dets molekyler, og man forstår ikke rigtig dét, før man har set det brænde. Så det her er, hvad der sker, når branden kommer i gang. Det starter. Det er et stort "wush". Jeg anbefaler virkelig, at I tager chancen til at se råolie brænde en dag, for så behøver I aldrig at høre endnu en statskundskabsforelæsning om olies geopolitiske betydning igen. Det vil simpelthen brænde sig fast på jeres nethinder. Dér er det så: nethinderne brænder.
This is a photograph from when I visited Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in 2002 to watch the Minerals Management Service testing their ability to burn oil spills in ice. And what you see here is, you see a little bit of crude oil, you see some ice cubes, and you see two sandwich baggies of napalm. The napalm is burning there quite nicely. And the thing is, is that oil is really an abstraction for us as the American consumer. We're four percent of the world's population; we use 25 percent of the world's oil production. And we don't really understand what oil is, until you check out its molecules, And you don't really understand that until you see this stuff burn. So this is what happens as that burn gets going. It takes off. It's a big woosh. I highly recommend that you get a chance to see crude oil burn someday, because you will never need to hear another poli sci lecture on the geopolitics of oil again. It'll just bake your retinas. So there it is; the retinas are baking.
Lad mig fortælle jer en lille smule om olies kemi. Olie er en ragout af hydrogencarbonat-molekyler. Det starter med de meget små, der er et carbonat, fire hydrogen -- det er metan -- det svæver bare væk. Der er alle mulige mellemformer med gennemsnitligt indhold af carbonat. I har sikkert hørt om benzen-ringe; de er meget kræftfremkaldende. Og det fortsætter hele vejen over til de store, tykke og kluntede, der har hundreder af carbonater, og de har tusinde af hydrogenmolekyler, og de har vanadium og tungmetaller og svovl og alle mulige slags vanvid hængende ud af siderne på dem. De er kaldt asfaltaner; de er en ingrediens i asfalt. De er meget vigtige i olieudslip.
Let me tell you a little bit about this chemistry of oil. Oil is a stew of hydrocarbon molecules. It starts of with the very small ones, which are one carbon, four hydrogen -- that's methane -- it just floats off. Then there's all sorts of intermediate ones with middle amounts of carbon. You've probably heard of benzene rings; they're very carcinogenic. And it goes all the way over to these big, thick, galumphy ones that have hundreds of carbons, and they have thousands of hydrogens, and they have vanadium and heavy metals and sulfur and all kinds of craziness hanging off the sides of them. Those are called the asphaltenes; they're an ingredient in asphalt. They're very important in oil spills.
Lad mig fortælle jer en lille smule om olies kemi i vand. Det er denne kemi, der gør olie så katastrofal. Olie synker ikke, det flyder. Hvis det sank, ville det være en helt anden historie, når det kommer til oliespild. Og den anden ting, det gør, er, at det spreder sig i det øjeblik, det rammer vandet. Det spreder sig ud til et virkelig tyndt lag, så det er vanskeligt at indsamle. Det næste, der sker, er, at de lette dele fordamper, og nogle af de giftige stoffer flyder ind i vandsøjlen og dræber fiskeæg og mindre fisk og den slags, og rejer. Og så asfaltenerne -- og det er centralt -- asfaltenerne bliver pisket af bølgerne til en skummende emulsion, noget a la mayonaise. Det tredobler mængden af olieret, klæbrig masse, som man har i vandet, og gør det meget vanskeligt at håndtere. Det gør det også meget klæbrigt. Da Prestige sank ud for den spanske kyst, var der store flydende klumper på størrelse med sofahynder af emulgeret olie med en konsistens, eller tyktflydenhed, som tyggegummi. Det er utrolig vanskeligt at rense ud. Og enhver slags olie er forskelligt, når det rammer vand.
Let me tell you a little bit about the chemistry of oil in water. It is this chemistry that makes oil so disastrous. Oil doesn't sink, it floats. If it sank, it would be a whole different story as far as an oil spill. And the other thing it does is it spreads out the moment it hits the water. It spreads out to be really thin, so you have a hard time corralling it. The next thing that happens is the light ends evaporate, and some of the toxic things float into the water column and kill fish eggs and smaller fish and things like that, and shrimp. And then the asphaltenes -- and this is the crucial thing -- the asphaltenes get whipped by the waves into a frothy emulsion, something like mayonnaise. It triples the amount of oily, messy goo that you have in the water, and it makes it very hard to handle. It also makes it very viscous. When the Prestige sank off the coast of Spain, there were big, floating cushions the size of sofa cushions of emulsified oil, with the consistency, or the viscosity, of chewing gum. It's incredibly hard to clean up. And every single oil is different when it hits water.
Når olies og vands kemi også rammer vores politik, bliver det absolut eksplosivt. For første gang ser amerikanske forbrugere olies logistikkæde foran sig. De har et "Heureka"-øjeblik, når de pludselig forstår olie i en anden kontekst. Så jeg vil tale bare en smule om denne type politiks oprindelse, for det er virkelig centralt for at forstå, hvorfor denne sommer er så vigtig, hvorfor vi blive nødt til at holde fokus. Ingen står op om morgenen og tænker: "Wauw! Jeg vil købe omkring tre til tolv carbonat-molekyler til at proppe i tanken og køre glad på arbejde." Nej, de tænker: "Uhh. Jeg bliver nødt til at købe benzin. Jeg er så vred over det. Olieselskaberne tager ågerpriser. De sætter priserne, og jeg aner overhovedet ikke hvordan. Jeg er hjælpeløs overfor det." Og det her, er hvad der sker ved benzintanken -- og faktisk, så er benzinpumper specielt designet til at begrænse den vrede. I vil måske lægge mærke til at mange benzinpumper, denne her inklusive, er designet til at ligne pengeautomater. Jeg har talt med ingenører. Dét er specifikt for at forstyrre vores vrede, fordi vi åbenbart har det godt med pengeautomater. (Latter) Det viser, hvor slemt det er.
When the chemistry of the oil and water also hits our politics, it's absolutely explosive. For the first time, American consumers will kind of see the oil supply chain in front of themselves. They have a "eureka!" moment, when we suddenly understand oil in a different context. So I'm going to talk just a little bit about the origin of these politics, because it's really crucial to understanding why this summer is so important, why we need to stay focused. Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks, "Wow! I'm going to go buy some three-carbon-to-12-carbon molecules to put in my tank and drive happily to work." No, they think, "Ugh. I have to go buy gas. I'm so angry about it. The oil companies are ripping me off. They set the prices, and I don't even know. I am helpless over this." And this is what happens to us at the gas pump -- and actually, gas pumps are specifically designed to diffuse that anger. You might notice that many gas pumps, including this one, are designed to look like ATMs. I've talked to engineers. That's specifically to diffuse our anger, because supposedly we feel good about ATMs. (Laughter) That shows you how bad it is.
Men faktisk mener jeg, at denne følelse af hjælpeløshed dukker op, fordi de fleste amerikanere faktisk føler, at oliepriserne er et resultat af en sammensværgelse, ikke verdens oliemarkeds omskiftelighed. Og det, der også er, er, at vi også føler os meget hjælpeløse omkring, hvor meget vi konsumerer, hvilket til dels er rimeligt, fordi vi faktisk har designet et system, hvor, hvis du vil have et job, er det meget vigtigere at have en bil, der kører, for at have et job og beholde dét, end at have en gymnasieuddannelse. Og det er faktisk temmelig perverst.
But actually, I mean, this feeling of helplessness comes in because most Americans actually feel that oil prices are the result of a conspiracy, not of the vicissitudes of the world oil market. And the thing is, too, is that we also feel very helpless about the amount that we consume, which is somewhat reasonable, because in fact, we have designed this system where, if you want to get a job, it's much more important to have a car that runs, to have a job and keep a job, than to have a GED. And that's actually very perverse.
Der er en anden pervers ting i måden, vi køber benzin på, som er, at vi hellere vil gøre alt andet. Det her er BP's benzintank i Los Angeles centrum. Den er grøn. Den er et tempel til grønhed. "Hvorfor," tænker I, "ville noget så lamt virke på så smarte folk?" Grunden er, at når vi køber benzin, er vi meget investeret i den form for erkendelsesdissonans. Jeg mener, vi er på den ene side vrede og vil gøre noget andet. Vi vil ikke købe olie; vi vil gøre noget grønt. Og vi lander nærmest i vores eget bedrag. Jeg mener - og det er sjovt, det ser sjovt ud her. Men det er faktisk derfor sloganet "beyond petroleum" virker. Men det er en integreret del af vores energipolitik, at vi ikke taler om at reducere mængden af olie, vi bruger. Vi taler om uafhængighed fra energi. Vi taler om hydrogenbiler. Vi taler om biobrændsel, der endnu ikke er opfundet. Og dermed er erkendelsesdissonans en del af måden, vi tager hånd om olie på, og det er virkelig vigtigt at vi tager hånd om dette olieudslip.
Now there's another perverse thing about the way we buy gas, which is that we'd rather be doing anything else. This is BP's gas station in downtown Los Angeles. It is green. It is a shrine to greenishness. "Now," you think, "why would something so lame work on people so smart?" Well, the reason is, is because, when we're buying gas, we're very invested in this sort of cognitive dissonance. I mean, we're angry at the one hand and we want to be somewhere else. We don't want to be buying oil; we want to be doing something green. And we get kind of in on our own con. I mean -- and this is funny, it looks funny here. But in fact, that's why the slogan "beyond petroleum" worked. But it's an inherent part of our energy policy, which is we don't talk about reducing the amount of oil that we use. We talk about energy independence. We talk about hydrogen cars. We talk about biofuels that haven't been invented yet. And so, cognitive dissonance is part and parcel of the way that we deal with oil, and it's really important to dealing with this oil spill.
Okay, så politikken omkring olie er meget moralsk i USA. Olieindustrien er som en kæmpe, gigantisk blæksprutte af ingenørkunst og finans og alt muligt andet, men vi ser den faktisk med meget moralske briller. Det her er et tidligt fotografi -- man kan se, vi har de her springbrønde. Datidens journalister kiggede på de her udslip, og sagde: "Det er en beskidt industri." Men de så også i den, at folk blev rige uden at gøre noget for det. De var ikke landmænd; de blev bare rige af noget, der kom op af jorden. Det var faktisk "de rige bonderøve". Men i begyndelsen blev det set som en problematisk moralsk ting, lang tid før det blev morsomt.
Okay, so the politics of oil are very moral in the United States. The oil industry is like a huge, gigantic octopus of engineering and finance and everything else, but we actually see it in very moral terms. This is an early-on photograph -- you can see, we had these gushers. Early journalists looked at these spills, and they said, "This is a filthy industry." But they also saw in it that people were getting rich for doing nothing. They weren't farmers, they were just getting rich for stuff coming out of the ground. It's the "Beverly Hillbillies," basically. But in the beginning, this was seen as a very morally problematic thing, long before it became funny.
Og så var der, selvfølgelig, John D. Rockefeller. Og det, der er med John D., er at han tog ind i det kaotiske vilde vesten af olieindustri, og han rationaliserede det til et vertikalt strukturet firma, en multinational virksomhed. Det var frygteligt; tror du at Walmart er en frygtelig forretningsmodel nu, så forestil dig, hvordan det så ud i 1860erne eller 1870erne. Og det er også grunden til, at vi ser olie som en sammensværgelse. Men det, der er virkelig utroligt, er, at Ida Tarbell, journalisten, tog ind og lavede en stor afsløring af Rockefeller og fik faktisk hele kartellovgivningen på plads. Men på mange måder følger billedet af sammensværgelse stadig med os. Og her er en ting som Tarbell sagde -- hun sagde: "Han har en næse så tynd som en torn. Der er ingen læber. Der er rande under de små farveløse øjne med furer løbende fra dem." (Latter) Okay, så den fyr er her faktisk endnu. (Latter) Jeg mener, det er allestedsnærværende -- det er en del af vores DNA. Og så er der ham her, okay.
And then, of course, there was John D. Rockefeller. And the thing about John D. is that he went into this chaotic wild-east of oil industry, and he rationalized it into a vertically integrated company, a multinational. It was terrifying; you think Walmart is a terrifying business model now, imagine what this looked like in the 1860s or 1870s. And it also the kind of root of how we see oil as a conspiracy. But what's really amazing is that Ida Tarbell, the journalist, went in and did a big exposé of Rockefeller and actually got the whole antitrust laws put in place. But in many ways, that image of the conspiracy still sticks with us. And here's one of the things that Ida Tarbell said -- she said, "He has a thin nose like a thorn. There were no lips. There were puffs under the little colorless eyes with creases running from them." (Laughter) Okay, so that guy is actually still with us. (Laughter) I mean, this is a very pervasive -- this is part of our DNA. And then there's this guy, okay.
Så I spekulerer måske på, hvorfor vi - hver gang vi har høje oliepriser eller et olieudslip - hidkalder administrerende direktører til Washington, og steger dem med spørgsmål i offentlige høringer og prøver at gøre dem flove. Og det er noget vi har gjort siden 1974, da vi første gang spurgte dem: "Hvorfor er der sådan nogle uanstændige overskud?" Og vi har ligesom personificeret hele olieindustrien i de administrerende direktører. Og vi tager det som, I ved -- vi ser på det fra en moralsk vinkel, fremfor at se det fra en juridisk og finansiel vinkel. Og jeg siger ikke, at de her fyre ikke er forpligtede til at svare på spørgsmål -- Jeg siger bare, at når vi fokuserer på om de er en flok grådige svin eller ej, så når man faktisk aldrig til det punkt, hvor man får lavet love, der enten ændrer måden, de arbejder på, eller når til virkelig at reducere mængden af olie og reducere vores afhængighed af olie. Så jeg siger, at det er en form for afledningsmanøvre. Men det bliver godt teater, og det er stærk katharsisk, som I sikkert så i sidste uge.
So, you might be wondering why it is that, every time we have high oil prices or an oil spill, we call these CEOs down to Washington, and we sort of pepper them with questions in public and we try to shame them. And this is something that we've been doing since 1974, when we first asked them, "Why are there these obscene profits?" And we've sort of personalized the whole oil industry into these CEOs. And we take it as, you know -- we look at it on a moral level, rather than looking at it on a legal and financial level. And so I'm not saying these guys aren't liable to answer questions -- I'm just saying that, when you focus on whether they are or are not a bunch of greedy bastards, you don't actually get around to the point of making laws that are either going to either change the way they operate, or you're going to get around to really reducing the amount of oil and reducing our dependence on oil. So I'm saying this is kind of a distraction. But it makes for good theater, and it's powerfully cathartic as you probably saw last week.
Så dét, der er med olieudslip, er, at de er meget politisk opildnende. Jeg mener, de her billeder -- det er fra Santa Barbara-udslippet. I har de her billeder af fugle. De påvirker virkelig folk. I 1969, da Santa Barbara-udslippet skete, skabte det miljøbevægelsen i sin moderne form. Det startede Jordens Dag. Det fik implementeret National Miljø Målsætning-loven (NEPA), Ren Luft-loven, Rent Vand-loven. Alt, hvad vi faktisk er, stammer fra denne periode. Jeg tror, det er vigtigt at se på de her billeder af fuglene og forstå, hvad der sker med os. Her er vi normalt; vi står ved benzintanken, og føler os lidt hjælpeløse. Vi ser på de her billeder, og vi forstår for første gang vores rolle i forsyningskæden. Vi forbinder punkterne i forsyningskæden. Og vi har det her -- som vælgere har vi en form for "Heureka!"-øjeblik. Det er derfor, disse øjeblikke omkring olieudslip er så vigtige. Men det er også virkelig vigtigt, at vi ikke bliver distraherede af teatret eller moralen omkring det. Vi bliver faktisk nødt til at gå ind og arbejde med problemets rod.
So the thing about water oil spills is that they are very politically galvanizing. I mean, these pictures -- this is from the Santa Barbara spill. You have these pictures of birds. They really influence people. When the Santa Barbara spill happened in 1969, it formed the environmental movement in its modern form. It started Earth Day. It also put in place the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. Everything that we are really stemmed from this period. I think it's important to kind of look at these pictures of the birds and understand what happens to us. Here we are normally; we're standing at the gas pump, and we're feeling kind of helpless. We look at these pictures and we understand, for the first time, our role in this supply chain. We connect the dots in the supply chain. And we have this kind of -- as voters, we have kind of a "eureka!" moment. This is why these moments of these oil spills are so important. But it's also really important that we don't get distracted by the theater or the morals of it. We actually need to go in and work on the roots of the problem.
En af de ting, der skete ved de to forrige olieudslip, var, at vi virkelig arbejdede på nogle af symptomerne. Vi var meget reaktive, i modsætning til proaktive, omkring det, der skete. Så det, vi faktisk gjorde, var at holde pauser i boringerne på øst- og vest-kysten. Vi stoppede med at bore i det nationale arktiske vildtlivsreservat (ANWR), men vi reducerede ikke mængden af olie, vi konsumerede. Faktisk så er det startet med at stige. Den eneste ting, der virkelig reducerer vores olieforbrug er meget højere priser. Som I kan se, er vores produktion faldet som vores reservoirer er blevet gamle og dyre at bore efter. Vi har kun to procent af verdens oliereserver; 65 procent af dem er i Den Persiske Golf.
One of the things that happened with the two previous oil spills was that we really worked on some of the symptoms. We were very reactive, as opposed to being proactive about what happened. And so what we did was, actually, we made moratoriums on the east and west coasts on drilling. We stopped drilling in ANWR, but we didn't actually reduce the amount of oil that we consumed. In fact, it's continued to increase. The only thing that really reduces the amount of oil that we consume is much higher prices. As you can see, our own production has fallen off as our reservoirs have gotten old and expensive to drill out. We only have two percent of the world's oil reserves; 65 percent of them are in the Persian Gulf.
En af de ting, der skete på grund af det, er, at siden 1969 har Nigeria, eller den del af Nigeria, hvor der pumpes olie, hvilket er deltaet -- som er dobbelt så stort som Maryland -- har haft tusind olieudslip om året. Jeg mener, vi har faktisk eksporteret olieudslip, når vi importerer olie fra steder uden stramme miljøreguleringer. Det svarer til et Exxon Valdez-udslip hvert år siden 1969. Og vi kan forstå udslippene, fordi det er, hvad vi ser her, men faktisk lever de her fyrer i en krigszone. Der er tusind kamprelaterede dødsfald om året i det her område, der er to gange Marylands størrelse, og det er alt sammen relateret til olien. Og de her fyre, jeg mener, hvis de var i USA, så var de måske i det her rum. De har universitetsgrader i statsvidenskab, i handel -- de er entreprenører. De vil faktisk ikke lave det, de laver. Og det er en af de andre grupper af mennesker, der betaler prisen for os.
One of the things that's happened because of this is that, since 1969, the country of Nigeria, or the part of Nigeria that pumps oil, which is the delta -- which is two times the size of Maryland -- has had thousands of oil spills a year. I mean, we've essentially been exporting oil spills when we import oil from places without tight environmental regulations. That has been the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every year since 1969. And we can wrap our heads around the spills, because that's what we see here, but in fact, these guys actually live in a war zone. There's a thousand battle-related deaths a year in this area twice the size of Maryland, and it's all related to the oil. And these guys, I mean, if they were in the U.S., they might be actually here in this room. They have degrees in political science, degrees in business -- they're entrepreneurs. They don't actually want to be doing what they're doing. And it's sort of one of the other groups of people who pay a price for us.
En anden ting, vi gør, mens vi fortsat hæver efterspørgslen, er, at vi spiller en form for svindelnummer med omkostningerne. Et af de steder, vi har startet et stort olieprojekt, er Chad med Exxon. Så den amerikanske skatteborger betalte for det; Verdensbanken, Exxon betalte for det. Vi starter det. Der var et enormt problem med banditter. Jeg var der i 2003. Vi kørte langs denne mørke, mørke vej, og en fyr i grønt træder frem, og jeg tænker: "Åhh! Det var så det." Og så træder en fyr i Exxon-uniform frem, og det går op for os, at det er okay. De har deres egen slags hær omkring deres oliefelter. Men samtidig er Chad blevet meget mere ustabil, og vi betaler ikke prisen ved tanken. Vi betaler for det med vores skatter den femtende april.
The other thing that we've done, as we've continued to increase demand, is that we kind of play a shell game with the costs. One of the places we put in a big oil project in Chad, with Exxon. So the U.S. taxpayer paid for it; the World Bank, Exxon paid for it. We put it in. There was a tremendous banditry problem. I was there in 2003. We were driving along this dark, dark road, and the guy in the green stepped out, and I was just like, "Ahhh! This is it." And then the guy in the Exxon uniform stepped out, and we realized it was okay. They have their own private sort of army around them at the oil fields. But at the same time, Chad has become much more unstable, and we are not paying for that price at the pump. We pay for it in our taxes on April 15th.
Vi gør det samme med prisen for overvågning af Den Persiske Golf og for at holde skibsruterne åbne. Det her er 1988 -- vi bombede faktisk to iranske olieplatforme det år. Det var begyndelsen på USA's øgede engagement der, som vi ikke betaler ved benzintanken. Vi betaler for det den femtende april, og vi kan ikke engang beregne omkostningerne for det engagement. Det andet sted, der støtter vores afhængighed af olie og vores øgede forbrug, er Den Mexikanske Golf, som ikke var en del af bore-pauserne. Det, som skete i Den Mexikanske Golf -- som man kan se, det her er 'Mineral Administrationsdiagrammet' over gas- og oliebrønde. Den er blevet det her intenst industrialiserede område. Det har ikke samme resonans hos os som det nationale arktiske vildtlivsreservat har, men det burde det. Jeg mener; det er et fuglereservat. Desuden; hver gang man køber benzin i USA, bliver halvdelen raffineret langs kysten, fordi Golfen faktisk har omkring 50 procent af vores rafineringskapacitet og også mange af vores maritime adgange. Så folkene omkring Golfen har egentlig givet os andre tilskud i form af et mindre rent miljø.
We do the same thing with the price of policing the Persian Gulf and keeping the shipping lanes open. This is 1988 -- we actually bombed two Iranian oil platforms that year. That was the beginning of an escalating U.S. involvement there that we do not pay for at the pump. We pay for it on April 15th, and we can't even calculate the cost of this involvement. The other place that is sort of supporting our dependence on oil and our increased consumption is the Gulf of Mexico, which was not part of the moratoriums. Now what's happened in the Gulf of Mexico -- as you can see, this is the Minerals Management diagram of wells for gas and oil. It's become this intense industrialized zone. It doesn't have the same resonance for us that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has, but it should, I mean, it's a bird sanctuary. Also, every time you buy gasoline in the United States, half of it is actually being refined along the coast, because the Gulf actually has about 50 percent of our refining capacity and a lot of our marine terminals as well. So the people of the Gulf have essentially been subsidizing the rest of us through a less-clean environment.
Og endelig betaler amerikanske familier også prisen for olien. Så på den ene side er prisen på tankstationen ikke særlig høj, når man overvejer de egentlige omkostninger af olien, på den anden side, det faktum, at folk ikke har andre transportmuligheder betyder, at de betaler en stor del af deres indkomst på bare at komme frem og tilbage til arbejde, generelt i en ret ussel bil. Hvis man ser på folk, der tjener 280.000 kr. om året, de har to børn, de har måske tre job eller mere, og de bliver virkelig nødt til at pendle. De bruger faktisk flere penge på deres bil og brændstof end de bruger på skatter eller sundhedsforsikring. Og det samme foregår omkring den 50. procent, omkring 440.000 kr. Benzinomkostninger er utrolig drænende for den amerikanske økonomi, men også for de individuelle familier, og det er lidt skræmmende at tænke på, hvad der sker, når priserne bliver højere.
And finally, American families also pay a price for oil. Now on the one hand, the price at the pump is not really very high when you consider the actual cost of the oil, but on the other hand, the fact that people have no other transit options means that they pay a large amount of their income into just getting back and forth to work, generally in a fairly crummy car. If you look at people who make $50,000 a year, they have two kids, they might have three jobs or more, and then they have to really commute. They're actually spending more on their car and fuel than they are on taxes or on health care. And the same thing happens at the 50th percentile, around 80,000. Gasoline costs are a tremendous drain on the American economy, but they're also a drain on individual families and it's kind of terrifying to think about what happens when prices get higher.
Så det, jeg vil tale lidt om nu, er: hvad skal vi gøre denne gang? Hvilke love findes? Hvad skal vi gøre for at holde os selv fokuserede? En ting er -- vi bliver nødt til at holde os fra teatret. Vi er nødt til at holde os fra pauserne. Vi er nødt til igen at fokusere på molekylerne. Pauser er fine, men vi bliver nødt til at fokusere på oliens molekyler. En af tingene, vi bliver nødt til, er at prøve ikke at bedrage os selv til at tro, at vi kan have en grøn verden, før vi reducerer mængden af olie, vi bruger. Vi bliver nødt til at fokusere på at reducere olien.
So, what I'm going to talk to you about now is: what do we have to do this time? What are the laws? What do we have to do to keep ourselves focused? One thing is -- we need to stay away from the theater. We need to stay away from the moratoriums. We need to focus really back again on the molecules. The moratoriums are fine, but we do need to focus on the molecules on the oil. One of the things that we also need to do, is we need to try to not kind of fool ourselves into thinking that you can have a green world, before you reduce the amount of oil that we use. We need to focus on reducing the oil.
Det, I er i den øverste tegning, er et skema over, hvordan petroleum bliver brugt i USA's økonomi Det kommer ind fra siden -- det brugbare er det mørkegrå, og det ubrugelige, som bliver kaldt afvist energi -- affaldet, ryger op til toppen. I kan se, at der er langt mere affald end det brugbare. Og en af de ting, vi bliver nødt til at gøre, er ikke blot at ordne brændstofeffektiviteten på vores køretøjer og gøre dem langt mere effektive, men vi bliver også nødt til at ordne økonomien generelt.
What you see in this top drawing is a schematic of how petroleum gets used in the U.S. economy. It comes in on the side -- the useful stuff is the dark gray, and the un-useful stuff, which is called the rejected energy -- the waste, goes up to the top. Now you can see that the waste far outweighs the actually useful amount. And one of the things that we need to do is, not only fix the fuel efficiency of our vehicles and make them much more efficient, but we also need to fix the economy in general.
Vi bliver nødt til at fjerne de perverse incitamenter til at bruge mere brændstof. Vi har for eksempel et forsikringssystem hvor en person, der kører 32.000 km om året, betaler det samme i forsikring som én, der kører 4.800 km. Vi opfordrer faktisk folk til at køre mere. Vi har love, der belønner ligegyldighed -- vi har alle mulige slags love. Vi bliver nødt til at have flere transportmuligheder. Vi er nødt til at få benzinprisen til bedre at reflektere oliens virkelige omkostninger. Og vi bliver nødt til at flytte støtte til olieindustrien, som er på mindst 57 milliarder kr. om året, til noget, der tillader middelklassen at finde bedre måder at pendle på. Om det er ved at få en langt mere effektiv bil og også skabe et marked for nye biler og nye brændsler henad vejen, så er det her, vi bliver nødt til at være. Vi bliver nødt til at rationalisere alt det her, og man kan finde mere om den målsætning. Den hedder STRONG, der betyder "Sikker Transport ved Reduktion af Oliebehov Gradvist," og ideen er, at vi i stedet for at være hjælpeløse, må være stærkere. De er på NewAmerica.net. Det, der er vigtigt ved dem, er, at vi prøver at bevæge os fra følelsen af hjælpeløshed ved tankstationen til faktisk at være aktive og til virkelig at tænke over, hvem vi er, have det særlige øjeblik, hvor vi faktisk forbinder punkterne nede ved benzintanken.
We need to remove the perverse incentives to use more fuel. For example, we have an insurance system where the person who drives 20,000 miles a year pays the same insurance as somebody who drives 3,000. We actually encourage people to drive more. We have policies that reward sprawl -- we have all kinds of policies. We need to have more mobility choices. We need to make the gas price better reflect the real cost of oil. And we need to shift subsidies from the oil industry, which is at least 10 billion dollars a year, into something that allows middle-class people to find better ways to commute. Whether that's getting a much more efficient car and also kind of building markets for new cars and new fuels down the road, this is where we need to be. We need to kind of rationalize this whole thing, and you can find more about this policy. It's called STRONG, which is "Secure Transportation Reducing Oil Needs Gradually," and the idea is instead of being helpless, we need to be more strong. They're up at NewAmerica.net. What's important about these is that we try to move from feeling helpless at the pump, to actually being active and to really sort of thinking about who we are, having kind of that special moment, where we connect the dots actually at the pump.
Oliebeskatning er angiveligt tabu i amerikansk politik -- en flyveforbudszone. Jeg er faktisk -- Jeg er enig i, at 1,5 krone pr. liter olie nok er for meget, men jeg synes, at hvis vi næste år startede med 5 øre pr. liter på benzin, og hævede det til 10 øre næste år, 15 øre det følgende år, hele vejen op til 50 øre i 2020, så kunne vi faktisk reducere vores benzinforbrug markant, og samtidig ville vi give folk tid til at forberede sig, tid til at reagere, og vi ville hente penge og øge bevidstheden på samme tid. Lad mig give jer en lille ide om, hvordan det ville virke.
Now supposedly, oil taxes are the third rail of American politics -- the no-fly zone. I actually -- I agree that a dollar a gallon on oil is probably too much, but I think that if we started this year with three cents a gallon on gasoline, and upped it to six cents next year, nine cents the following year, all the way up to 30 cents by 2020, that we could actually significantly reduce our gasoline consumption, and at the same time we would give people time to prepare, time to respond, and we would be raising money and raising consciousness at the same time. Let me give you a little sense of how this would work.
Det her er en gasregning - hypotetisk set - for næste år. Det første man har på denne her skat er -- du har en skat for et stærkere USA -- 1,9 kr. Så du er ikke hjælpeløs ved benzintanken. Og den anden ting du har er et slags advarselsskilt meget lig det, du finder på en cigaretpakke. Og det skal sige: "Videnskabernes Akademi vurderer, at hver liter benzin, du bruger i din bil skaber 44 øre i sundhedsomkostninger." Det er meget. Og så det her -- man kan se, at man betaler betydeligt mindre end sundhedsomkostningerne over skatten. Og desuden er håbet, at man bliver forbundet til det større system. Samtidig med, at man har et nummer, som man kan ringe til for at få mere information om pendling, eller et lavtforrentet lån til en anden slags bil, eller hvad det end er, man har brug for for faktisk at reducere sin benzinafhængighed. Med hele dette katalog af politiske muligheder kunne vi faktisk reducere vores benzinforbrug -- eller vores olieforbrug -- med 20 procent i 2020. Så tre millioner tønder om dagen.
This is a gas receipt, hypothetically, for a year from now. The first thing that you have on the tax is -- you have a tax for a stronger America -- 33 cents. So you're not helpless at the pump. And the second thing that you have is a kind of warning sign, very similar to what you would find on a cigarette pack. And what it says is, "The National Academy of Sciences estimates that every gallon of gas you burn in your car creates 29 cents in health care costs." That's a lot. And so this -- you can see that you're paying considerably less than the health care costs on the tax. And also, the hope is that you start to be connected to the whole greater system. And at the same time, you have a number that you can call to get more information on commuting, or a low-interest loan on a different kind of car, or whatever it is you're going to need to actually reduce your gasoline dependence. With this whole sort of suite of policies, we could actually reduce our gasoline consumption -- or our oil consumption -- by 20 percent by 2020. So, three million barrels a day.
Men for at gøre det er en af de ting, vi bliver nødt til, at huske, at vi er hydrokarbonatets folk. Vi bliver nødt til at holde vores fokus på molekylerne og ikke blive distraheret af teatret, ikke blive distraheret af erkendelsesdissonansen af grønne muligheder, der er derude. Vi bliver nødt til uforfærdet at gøre det hårde arbejde med at reducere vores afhængighed af denne brændstof og disse molekyler.
But in order to do this, one of the things we really need to do, is we need to remember we are people of the hydrocarbon. We need to keep or minds on the molecules and not get distracted by the theater, not get distracted by the cognitive dissonance of the green possibilities that are out there. We need to kind of get down and do the gritty work of reducing our dependence upon this fuel and these molecules.
Tak.
Thank you.
(Klapsalver)
(Applause)