Former CIA Director
and advisor to John McCain during the 2008 campaign James Woolsey bubbles with enthusiasm when speaking of his car: a modified Prius which is a Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) able to run on electricity from his roof-top solar and on gasoline for an equivalent of about 100 miles per gallon.
“We’re paying for both sides in this war, and that’s not a good long-term strategy,” Woolsey says. “I have a bumper sticker on the back of my Prius that reads, ‘Bin Laden hates this car.'”
Now that ‘wanted’ has changed to ‘deceased’ when it comes to bin Laden, perhaps the bumper sticker will change to “hated”.
The core purpose, however, hasn’t changed. From a 2007 interview, prior to the 2008 and (now) 2011 run up of oil prices:
“The heart of the issue is that, although we have other vulnerabilities in our infrastructure-the electricity grid needs changes, for example-those things are at least under the national control of each country. The oil infrastructure is the only one that is worldwide, and much of it is located in the extremely volatile Persian Gulf. A terrorist attack could send prices well over $100 a barrel. There’s no other commodity like that. Transportation is 97-percent dependent on oil, which means our oil-importing society has an Achilles’ heel sitting out there in the most volatile part of the world. We could wake up and find that overnight the cost of transportation has doubled-a shock for the economy, but it would be a disaster for people who have to drive places for a living and don’t have much money.”
“A disaster for people who have to drives places for a living and don’t have much money” along with a disaster for all as spiking oil prices lead to increased commodity prices and displace other (more valuable) uses for the money than perpetuating fossil-foolish energy systems and spiking oil company profits.
Driving a PHEV enables Woolsey to radically reduce his transportation fuel requirements. [Photo to right is President George W. Bush looking at Woolsey’s Prius the day he accepted delivery at the 2008 Washington International Renewable Energy Conference in Washington, DC.] If spread across the nation’s personal vehicle, cutting oil demand by several million barrels of oil per day by the end of the decade would translate directly into $100s of billions of fewer dollars sent overseas and indirectly to lower oil prices to all. And, it would help reduce the funding available for Bin Laden-wannabes and otherwise dangerous regimes.
Woolsey, however, doesn’t want to stop with that PHEV. He is part of a coalition seeking to ‘turn oil into salt’ (e.g., just another commodity amid plenty of choices):
“And if my Prius had an ethanol, other alcohol, or bio-based diesel engine using 85 percent biofuels,” said Woolsey, “I would get close to 500 mpg on the petroleum fuel in the engine.”
Transform America’s light passenger car fleet to 500 miles per gallon and that would do the lion’s share of the work to eliminate oil imports.
Related Post: Carpe Diem! Now that you’ve killed bin Laden, let’s kill off oil …
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1 Naming Electric Vehicle Value Streams // Mar 26, 2012 at 9:16 am
[…] former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and John McCain advisor, famously has (had?) a bumper sticker on his Prius (and then Plug-In Prius): “Bin Laden Hates This […]