Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ON
THE HORIZON
Oil skeptics like to point out that the United States consumes 20 percent
of the world's oil but owns only 2 percent of its oil reserves. Such lopsided
numbers, they insist, make optimism foolish when it comes to oil and
destine the United States to depend on foreign crude unless it slashes its
consumption and embraces alternatives.
Howard Jonas would undoubtedly disagree. Jonas is not your typical
oilman. In the early 1990s, he developed a simple but ingenious system
that let overseas telephone users avoid exorbitant long-distance rates;
by age forty, he had sold his company, IDT, and was worth more than
a billion dollars. h e tall, sot -spoken Bronx native with a slightly corny
sense of humor eventually moved on, writing two topics (one person
who reviewed
On a Roll: From Hot Dog Buns to High-Tech Billions
called
him a “genial multimillionaire” hiding “a closet rabbi”), founding a string
of other businesses, and, in 2004, moving to Israel to retire.
To hear him tell it, though, his heart has always been in oil. “During
the 1973 embargo I was seventeen. I'd just got en a car, just got en
a girlfriend. Next thing, I've got gas lines.” Jonas is holding forth in
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