Roscoe Bartlett: “increasing our energy independence is absolutely vital to ensuring America's national security. Americans are 5 percent…”

“increasing our energy independence is absolutely vital to ensuring America's national security. Americans are 5 percent of the world's population. We use 25 percent of the world's oil production, and yet we produce 30 percent of the world's output of goods and services. We are the most energy-efficient and productive Nation on earth, but America has only 2 percent of the world's known oil reserves. In pumping that 2 percent, we meet only 44 percent of America's needs. America must import nearly 60 percent of our oil, up from 32 percent in 1992 and 34 percent during the last Arab oil embargo. Americans must pay billions of dollars to unstable or hostile regimes, such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq, for the oil we need to run our economy and our military. Every year since 1970, with only a tiny blip from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, oil production in the United States has gone down, and experts agree it will continue to go down. That is why conservation, efficiency, and alternative and renewable forms of energy are critically important parts of a balanced, comprehensive national energy strategy.”