Environmentalism as National Security

Rolling Stone : The Hawk:

"Stern and officious, Jim Woolsey comes across like the hard-core hawk he is -- a former director of the CIA with access to high-level officials in the White House and the Pentagon. But going against the grain of old-school conservatism, he has become the loudest voice in a growing chorus of 'cheap hawks' who want to wage the war on terror with plug-in cars and fuel made from manure. A member of the Defense Policy Board, Woolsey wants to defeat terrorism by freeing America from its dependency on foreign oil, rather than routing the enemy with costly wars. 'America's energy demand is financing terror,' Woolsey says. 'We don't need pie-in-the-sky hydrogen scenarios that are twenty years out. We don't have that kind of time.'

Among the techno-fixes Woolsey promotes: producing ethanol from prairie grass and corncobs, harvesting biodiesel from farm waste and adding a battery to existing hybrid cars. 'Plug-in hybrids could get up to 150 miles per gallon,' he says. 'And since electricity is comparatively cheap, you would get the functional equivalent of fifty-cent-a-gallon gasoline.'

Woolsey's primary goal is to bolster America's national security. But his energy-independence strategy would also curb global warming, create a market for clean-energy providers, strengthen the dollar, cut the deficit and generate international good will. 'It's not just win-win,' he says. 'It's win-win-win-win-win.'"