The news lately carries reports that George W. Bush is going to ask the U.S. Congress for an extra $65 billion to rebuild Iraq. Presumably this pushes the cost of the Iraq operation well over $100 billion. Is it worth it? It depends on whether or not you have faith in technology.
Karl Taylor Compton, one-time president of MIT, was a believer in technology. Here are his words from 1938: “In recent times, modern science has developed to give mankind, for the first time, in the history of the human race, a way of securing a more abundant life which does not simply consist in taking away from someone else.”
The Arab world does not share this perspective. In a region where illiteracy is common and people lack the ability to manufacture the most simple items the best way to get richer is in fact to steal from neighbors (viz. Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait in 1990).
George W. Bush has some things in common with Arab rulers. For example, he is uninterested in technology and owes his wealth to family connections and special deals. For this kind of person it makes perfect sense to invade an oil-rich country and pump out the underground wealth.
What would an engineer do with $100 billion? Perhaps start by asking whether if the money were spent on building nuclear power plants we wouldn’t need Iraq’s oil. Let’s look at the numbers.
A nuclear power plant, using crummy old technology, costs less than $2000 per kilowatt-hour to construct (source) so $100 billion would suffice to build 50 million kilowatt-hours or 50 gigawatts of capacity. Total U.S. 2001 electricity demand was 670 gigawatts (source).
You get about 641 kwh per barrel of oil (computing backwards from this source). So those 50 million kwh save 78,000 barrels of oil per hour, which in a 24-hour day is 1.8 million barrels per day. Compare this to the U.S. total imports of about 10 million barrels per day (source) and total Kuwaiti production of 2 million barrels per day or 2.5 million barrels per day for pre-war Iraq.Roughly speaking, then, the amount of money the American taxpayer is spending to improve life in Iraq would be sufficient to generate as much power as all of the oil being pumped out of Iraq under the most optimistic scenarios. This is assuming no technical innovation in the design or construction of nuclear power plants (there are actually a bunch of slick new nuke designs that could be cheaper and safer, e.g., pebble bed, at $1000/kwh).
Nuclear power is, of course, very unpopular, and it would probably be possible to generate quite of a bit of electricity with $100 billion of wind and solar power. But let’s stick with nukes for the moment. Under the worst case scenarios it is very hard to see that nuclear accidents or waste could kill as many people as are being killed by oil. Burning oil fills the atmosphere with CO2 (10,000 deaths in France last summer, perhaps as a consequence of global warming). Burning oil fills the atmosphere with filth (many thousands of extra deaths from lung cancer every year). Buying oil from people who hate Americans causes deaths. Without Saudi wealth, all of which is derived from oil sales, Sept. 11th would not have been possible nor would various embassy bombings and other mass killings of Westerners (at least 5000 people in the last couple of years).
The Earth is abundantly supplied with energy. Why are we mud-wrestling with Iraqis when we could be working around the source of their power?
[Minor caveat: oil isn’t actually used for much electricity generation in the U.S.; most of it is coal, natural gas, or nuclear already. To replace all of the U.S.’s imported oil with electricity we’d have to get people to drive to the 7-11 in Toyota Priuses instead of Hummers, put much more advanced electronic engine controls on most engines, and probably put some of that $100 bil into fuel cell and electric car research.]
Very interesting analysis. Obviously, the Bush camp has not calculated the costs. I sure hope Congress denies his request.
While it’s rather pedantic — it seems so long ago now — Kuwait started stealing from Iraq first with its diagonally-drilled wells. But anyway…
I saw a note somewhere that the US interstate system was built for something like $350 billion. Which is like one year of military funding (funding which doesn’t actually cover *doing* anything, it only covers the military sitting around and being ready to do something). For all the problems of the interstate system, it’s still one hell of a bit of infrastructure. Instead we fritter it away on the corrupt military industrial complex (peace dividend?)…
The military, while certainly a notable and extreme example of wastefulness, is of course only one example among many. To think what we could do if we invested that in infrastructure, be that technological or merely civil. We spend so much effort investing in dead-ends, instead of ways to increase our productivity… to think what we could do otherwise is staggering…
Partisanship is superstition.
One more option: spend $90 billion on the nuclear reactors and then build a $10 billion space elevator. That way you can just zip the radioactive waste up the elevator and give it a nudge toward the sun.
Oh, and maybe space elevators will be handy for other things besides disposing of radioactive waste…
How about this option- let’s use the technology and resources that are already (fossil fuels) here and not let the overreaction from environmentalists prevent us from using our current energy sources to the fullest- in the US and abroad. That would change the dynamics as well.
Are those units right? I would expect to see power plants rated by power (W), not energy (Wh).
In particular, something seems wrong if a plant costs $2000/kWh to build but you sell the electricity for $0.04/kWh.
At the risk of toeing the neo-con line, doesn’t this just provide more evidence that it’s not about the oil? You seem to start with that assumption implicitly, and never question it.
At some point “That there Bush fellow shore enough is stupid!” stops making sense.
Philip, you are underestimating one of the greatest benefits of spending $100 billion invading a foreign country… it makes you look really good if you are an especially clueless president. In times of war, most American citizens, regardless of party affiliation will rally around you. You get to jet-set around the country on Air Force I while hundreds of 20-something armymen, many with new families die for a dubious war. You get to land on aircraft carriers and challenge the adversary to “bring them on”.
I doubt that such kicks could be available from either “nucular” (to use a bushism) power plants or toyota priuses.
“Nucular” isn’t a bushism. It’s a Slim Pickensism or Dr. Strangeloveism. Actually, I believe many in the south pronounce it this way.
“Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nucular combat toe to toe with the Roosskies”
Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens), Dr. Strangelove (1964)
$65 billion? No problem! Bush will simply request an emergency tax cut to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq.
Dubya called Saddam ‘the guy who tried to kill my dad’ (see http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/27/bush.war.talk/ )
Would’nt you spend a few billion dollars, albeit of other people’s money, to take out the guy who tried to kill your Daddy ?
Or, instead of going with electric cars, which do little to avoid the use of fossil fuels (you still have to generate that electricity), instead we can switch over to using diesel vehicles powered by biodiesel fuel – a non-fossil fuel. 100% biodiesel is compatible with regular diesel engines with little or no modification. It also has superior lubricity than regular diesel fuel, thus extending the life of your engine, and diesel engines already last much longer than gasoline engines. Biodiesel fuel can be extracted from plants, thus making a whole new possible crop for the farming industry to go ga-ga over. Once we have decent-quality diesel fuel available, we can start using modern diesel engines that aren’t available here in the U.S. Nice diesel engines aren’t sold in the U.S. due to the terrible quality of our diesel fuel, which is kept as it is by the trucking lobby, who want to have uber-cheap diesel fuel. It has a high sulphur content, which is that nasty smell you get with bad diesel fuel.
It seems a common misconception among americans that Bush is at least trying to govern the country, in a traditional sense.
But to me it seems pretty clear that what he does is no for the good of Americans, it’s definitely not for the good if Iraqis, it’s not even because he wants to be re-elected. He does things because they’re good for HIM and his bottom line.
It’s a good bet that a fair amount of the “Iraq rebuilding” money will end up in his pocket, in Cheneys pocket, and other relevant pockets.
I don’t even think he cares if he’s not re-elected, he’s already made a killing in this term. Who cares what people think of you if you can show them the finger from the comfort of your mansion?
Nuke power has unquantifiable costs in the long term due to handling hazardous waste. Why not spend the money on developing Microwave power transmission from space.
Also why not spend the money on trying to wean the US off oil, after all the US generates 25% of the worlds CO2 emissions for 4% of the worlds population
Although I have little love for the Bush administration, and the question is superficially interesting in itself, the premise is flawed.
You seem to presume that the basis for Islamic fundamentalism is western dependence on oil, and I can see no evidence for that being the case. There are religious, political, cultural and economic reasons why Islamic fundamentalism exists. Iraq was, and hopefully will be, least like the “arab world” you rather glibly dismiss. Regardless of the justification for the invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it is now a reality that has to be faced. We either choose to rebuild Iraq, encouraging and supporting the Iraqi people while they establish a functioning democratic state, which mitigates against at least the political and economic reasons for Islamic fundamentalism; or we abandon the country to the Islamic fundamentalists and prepare ourselves to live in a world that has yet another Afghanistan, only this time with oil wealth. I submit your $100B would then be spent on civil defense measures, or on fighting another war in the middle east.
Apart from the rather pragmatic goal of trying to stem the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, there’s the question of whether or not we owe something to the Iraqi people who suffered and died at our hands in this endeavor. Turning our backs on them now would only heap dishonor and discredit on what was already a questionable undertaking.
Although we can all enjoy sitting around the ol’ weblog congratulating ourselves on how much smarter we are than the president and his chief advisors, at the end of the day there are some very difficult realities that have to be faced. Energy policy is indeed one of them, but Iraq is a question that is only partially related to energy policy.
“The Arab world does not share this perspective.” — so do they believe in a way of securing a more abundant life which consists in taking away from someone else? All of them, I guess. Or only their governments? I also wonder who put the governments in power or supported them when they got there.
“Buying oil from people who hate Americans causes deaths.” — The wealth enables them to do something against the Americans they hate, but the question remains: Why do they hate Americans?
Interesting Post should I say at least. Well, I think there is more involve then just oil. I think trading oil in euros will cause dollar to loose free ride in global economy and in Bush’s eyes $100 billiion is a small price to pay to keep world dominance
Guys, guys: It has to be all about the oil. Iraq’s oil revenue was what enabled it to buy weapons, build weapons, and help out terrorists in other parts of the world. Without oil revenue they might have hated Americans just as much but they wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. I did not mean to imply that Islamic fundamentalism was caused somehow by oil but it has certainly been spread by oil wealth (e.g., Saudi Arabian-funded schools in Pakistan and other parts of the world) and most of its dangers stem from hatred + oil money (an Osama bin Laden who had been born to a poor family wouldn’t have caused the world any trouble (hey, and maybe we could say the same about George W!)).
Because of this connection between wealth and terrorism, for every $1 that we hand over to Islamic dictators for oil we probably have to figure on spending at least an extra $1 on military operations and reconstruction. That makes buying oil from the Middle East a false economy. We’d be better off spending the money on capital projects here in the U.S. that would enable us to stop buying the oil in the first place…
Or we could spend the $100 billion on thermal depolymerization.
I’m astonished that an MIT president said something so stupid. Voluntary trade has been securing a more abundant life for ten thousand years. Adam Smith understood this pretty well in the eighteenth century.
Was Karl Taylor Compton not the recipient of a good liberal arts education?
Of course weighing against the benefits from trade are the negative influences of violence, monopoly and slavery in its various guises, i.e. taking away from someone else. This has continued through all advances of science, from ancient Greece through the Enlightment and the 20th century, and is still going strong.
Should we move the costs of securing oil fields (some portion of the war on terror, the occupation of Iraq) to the beneficiaries of the oil? Perhaps a tax on oil at the pump? We consumed 19.7 million barrels per day in 2000. So, at 302 billion gallons per year, we could fund a $100 billion per year habit with a $0.35 per gallon tax. The virtues: fiscal responsibilty, transparency, market demand influence, and per gallon rates rise as consumption falls. Let the Congressional OMB allocate the expenses.
Could it work? Would you vote for it?
MIT President?
Adam Smith also understood very well the negative side of a totally free market without wealth re-distribution. We are witnessing this internally and also globally. Free market capitalists take all the positive messages from Smith, but ignore his warnings. He was not as big a fan of unrestricted free market capitalism as some people would have us believe.
Nice posting, Philip.
Investment decisions are important.
Another example:
The most recent estimates are that Californians
lost $40 billion to energy company over-charging
during our recent “crisis”.
Here’s another way that money could’ve been spent:
http://sodamountain.com/energy/40_billion.gif
Unfortunately, give an addict some cash, and
she usually buys more dope.
stan
I think that one would be well served by taking the Uranium Information Centre’s economic forecasts with a grain of salt – they are an unabashed advocacy organization. Most obviously, they totally ignore the costs of defending nuclear plants from terrorists and keeping control of material that could be used for warheads and bombs.
Similarly, the Department of Energy has a history of selling domestic use of the nuclear technology that was developed for military purposes, regardless of the affordability or safety of that technology.
While it’s nice to think that future reactor designs would be safer and more cost-effective than current ones, the complexity of building and running an actual nuclear reactor for decades is such that little confidence can be had from paper plans. The current generation was never thought to be susceptible to core meltdowns…
America seems to be better at winning wars than winning the peace. Perhaps the solution is to invade Saudi Arabia. This would certainly help cut off the funds to terrorists. It will keep the troops busy and moral high.
Interesting that Colin Powell said that he would ask the Iraqis to set the timetable for the progression to a democratic government. Obviously he has not dealt with Arabs much before. Getting a straight answer from a group of Arabs is challenging to say the least.
Joe, you don’t have to discuss these issues in the abstract. Both France and the UK (but especially France) have a significantly more ambitious nuclear energy program. They have roughly what we would have if the proto-religious anti-nuclear forces had not prevailed. If there is something egregious in either of those two countries please feel free to point it out.
If the U.S. were to cease all oil imports today, would that end the flow of oil out of and of money into the Middle East? Almost all of the consumer goods sold in the U.S. are made in underdeveloped oil-dependent countries. How long would it take too bring nukes or some other alternative energy source to those parts of the world? If we were to spend the $100 billion on research into cheaper safer nucular power, how long would it take for that technology to make it into the hands of those who hate us? $100 billion later: Middle Eastern rulers – still rich, and repressing their people, fostering hatred of Israel and the U.S. (indistinguishable in their eyes); Middle Eastern terrorists – still hate us and trying to kill us, except now they have new and improved nukes.
Wind & Solar baby… except take a look at who’s trying to stop progress in that arena: http://greennature.com/article1031.html
Now here we have two scenarios
1) U.S. invests big into ‘Nucular energy’
2) U.S. fucks up the whole planet with ‘nucular’ waste
3) we all die
Scenario B.
1) U.S. dethrones a genocidal dictator who deployed chemical weapons on his own populance.
2) U.S. really invests to rebuild the country and manages to establish a democratic Arab country.
3) Other Arab nations start to ask questions about the nature of their regimes.
now which one makes more sense from a global perspective.
For the request for 65B$ changed my little picture of the War. Wow, instead of just leaving a mess, the U.S. is actually trying to rebuild a country for a change. If Iraq is really rebuild, then the whole thing was worth it.
Kicking out a fascist dictator and giving the nation of Iraq a new start is a moral dead.
Ouch, that was ‘moral deed’
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