I Didn't Think Of That

Andrew Sullivan responds (via posting a reader e-mail) to me — albeit not directly — about my desire to stop using the Middle East as our oil supply:

To put it simply, it's all about Economics 101:

If we start weaning ourselves off oil, the first oil that we'll stop using is the oil that is the most expensive to get out of the ground... which would be offshore and Canada. The cheapest oil is from... you guessed it... the Middle East.

And another point of which I was already aware: We don't get that much of our oil from the Middle East (see this PDF for the exact numbers)... 11.2% to be exact, with OPEC worldwide supplying 26.8%.

So, overall, if we were to use less oil, the overall effect is we would actually INCREASE the percentage of our oil that we import from the Middle East.

Oh well. I don't suppose we could get principles to override economic logic, could we?