You Decide

…that alternative fuels and renewable power sources can’t produce enough energy to support current U.S. energy consumption?

Alternative fuels and other renewable energy sources are often touted as the panacea for our oil addiction. But current alternatives to fossil fuels, many say, couldn’t possibly meet Americans’ current energy needs.

Take ethanol, the alternative fuel made from corn. Many experts say even if you turned all of America’s corn into ethanol, it would still only meet 12 percent of our gasoline demand. And the notion that this “green fuel” will be better for us in the long run? Forget it: New research has concluded that if farmers cut down more forests or used grasslands to farm in order to increase biofuel production, greenhouse gas emissions would increase and global warming would worsen.

And what about the buzz around solar and wind energy? Although they may provide alternatives for electricity production, they don’t really help wean our dependence on oil founded on America’s love affair with the car. We could blanket the country with wind farms, but the energy they would produce wouldn’t run the more than 247 million cars responsible for a big chunk of our oil imports (transportation, including cars, trains and planes, makes up nearly 70 percent of U.S. oil consumption).

Although hybrids have enabled some Americans to switch to cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars, they still represent only a sliver of the automobile market. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars — silent, pollution-free prototype cars that run on the energy produced when hydrogen and oxygen are mixed — are often touted as the latest cure-all for our oil addiction, but experts say it could be more than 50 years before they might reach the mass market. Plus, they way they function now, they use more fuel than gasoline vehicles.

For now, the United States continues to consume more oil than any other nation in the world, and we lag behind Japan and most of Europe in terms of "energy productivity,” which is the level of output achieved from energy consumed. And despite billions of dollars invested in green research and technology, the United States trails behind China and Germany in renewable-power production.

…that imported oil is bad for the U.S. economy?

Many economists argue that oil imports drive the United States’ record debt and, in turn, threaten jobs and investment opportunities at home.

Oil imports make up more than a quarter of the U.S. trade deficit every year. In 2007, the negative balance between what Americans import and export was $711 billion. So if more money is leaving the country than coming in, how are we paying for those goods and services? For years, the United States has turned to foreign investors, including the governments of other countries — from China to, ironically, oil-exporting countries — to finance the resulting debt. But some warn there may come a time when overseas investors, fearful of their assets depreciating, will be less willing to fork over the capital. They say a major sell-off by foreign investors could be devastating, resulting in the crash of an already eroding U.S. dollar, a dramatic rise in interest rates, and the economy’s plunging into recession.

Historically, the global oil market has had profound consequences on the U.S. economy. Just about every U.S. recession since World War II has followed oil shocks, drastic swings in the world price of oil that have been largely determined by the decisions of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). Dependence on foreign oil makes our economy incredibly vulnerable to forces completely beyond our domestic control.

Then there’s the consumers’ pocketbook argument: With oil being traded at an all-time high of $100-plus a barrel, Americans are spending more than 6 percent of their disposable income on energy costs (and the percentage is far higher, of course, for low-income people). As a result, consumer spending in other areas is dropping. And when 70 percent of our economic growth is dependent on people buying stuff, that’s bad news for America’s bottom line.