Once again, Americans have been caught with their heads in the sand of the Middle East.

The executive director of The National Coal Council said Thursday that the present situation in the Persian Gulf — where millions of dollars and thousands of lives are committed to defend the nation’s oil supply — is a direct result of the failure of the American political process and the American people’s will.

“It’s like that saying we all used as kids, `Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,”‘ said James F. McAvoy, who heads the 5-year-old federal advisory commission.

A graduate of Bucksport High School and Maine Maritime Academy, McAvoy stressed that the council is not a trade association or a lobbying group for the coal industry. Rather, its members are appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Energy to provide advice on matters relating to coal.

“The council is forbidden, by law, from lobbying,” said McAvoy. “In a strict sense, we don’t advocate the use of coal, except in the broader energy picture.”

But McAvoy clearly believes that the broader energy picture requires increased use of coal.

“We feel that coal can and should be the cornerstone of a long-run national energy policy,” he said. “… The total heat value of coal within the United States is greater than all of the world’s oil reserves — by far, in fact.”

If domestic reserves of oil were used to meet all of the nation’s current energy needs, the supply would last only 10 years, according to a recent study by British Petroleum Corp. If natural gas were used exclusively, the supply would last 12 years. But the United States has domestic coal reserves sufficient to meet its energy needs for almost 300 years, the study found.

But coal is considered by many Americans to be a dirty fuel, responsible for such environmental problems as acid rain and global warming. McAvoy argued that scientists do not agree on the effect of acid rain on forests, and they have yet to prove whether the world is getting warmer.

Even so, he said, the council recognizes that the key to public acceptance of coal is the development of clean-coal technology.

“The principal factor in establishing full confidence in the ability of the United States to rely on its vast coal resources … centers on meeting the environmental challenges,” the council stated in a recent report on the role of coal in meeting future U.S. energy needs.

“Without economically competitive clean-coal technologies, coal will be an underutilized resource,” the council predicted.

McAvoy said that technologies exist, and more are being developed, to reduce emissions of pollutants linked to acid rain. Since 1973, he said, electric utilities have increased coal consumption by 96 percent while reducing total sulfur dioxide emissions by 22 percent.

New ways to convert coal to liquids and gases also must be developed, according to the council report.

“(Coal-derived fuels) must be at the core of the nation’s energy strategy in order to (1) cap the upper limits on imported oil and gas prices, and (2) create the potential to increase domestic supplies … as much as necessary to meet national demand, and protect economic and national security.”

But the council noted that “none of these technologies are competitive with oil or natural gas at current prices in the absence of government incentives.”

As Americans have learned yet again, oil prices are subject to factors almost entirely beyond U.S. control. The cost of crude has increased about 20 percent since Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait earlier this month. That alone has serious implications for the health of the U.S. economy.

But McAvoy said our reliance on foreign oil has other costs that cannot be ignored.

“There is no reason for us to be in the (current) situation in the Middle East,” he said. “I am very much opposed to importing large amounts of energy from unstable parts of the world, not to mention the environmental consequences of shipping oil in tankers from all around the world.”

Unlike oil, the price of coal is determined primarily by production costs. The number of tons of coal produced per man-hour of work has increased 85 percent since 1978, according to McAvoy. That led to a drop in inflation-adjusted coal prices of 28 percent during the last decade, he said.