Phil Gutis's Blog
Crack Cocaine and Oil
July 23, 2008
Posted by Phil Gutis in Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Last night, as I drove home from the train, an SUV came speeding up behind me and sat on the tail of my hybrid. I was in the mode of seeing how high I could get my gas mileage -- a near record of 47.6 by the time I got home! -- and couldn’t be bothered as the SUV crept closer and closer. In a few minutes, though, I watched amazed as the SUV driver hit the gas and used a tiny patch of a passing line to zoom by me.
Now being passed isn’t all that amazing. I definitely watch my speed these days as I try to maximize each gallon of gas. The amazing part was that we were blocks away from a series of red lights and lo and behold, who but my friendly SUV neighbor was sitting at a light as I pulled up 10 seconds behind him.
I don’t criticize my SUV driving neighbor for his car choice; I too have a legacy SUV still sitting in my driveway. But his need to hit the gas to pass me (and, I should note, I was driving the speed limit), was indicative of an addiction that Tom Friedman wrote about this week in the New York Times.
In his piece, 9/11 and 4/11, Friedman talks about our addiction to oil. Saying that drilling is not the answer to our problem, Friedman writes:
We don’t have a "gasoline price problem." We have an addiction problem. We are addicted to dirty fossil fuels, and this addiction is driving a whole set of toxic trends that are harming our nation and world in many different ways. It is intensifying global warming, creating runaway global demand for oil and gas, weakening our currency by shifting huge amounts of dollars abroad to pay for oil imports, widening "energy poverty" across Africa, destroying plants and animals at record rates and fostering ever-stronger petro-dictatorships in Iran, Russia and Venezuela.
Friedman continues to say that price increases are not the crack addict’s main problem. "His problem is what that crack addiction is doing to his whole body. The cure is not cheaper crack, which would only perpetuate the addiction and all the problems it is creating," Friedman says. "The cure is to break the addiction."
How? Today’s op-ed page in the Times offers one alternative: space solar power. Author O. Glenn Smith, a former manager at NASA, says that technology already exists for collecting solar power in space and beaming it back via wireless radio transmission to cities and other places where large amounts of power are used.
The cost: "Government scientists," Smith writes, "have projected the cost of electric power generation from such a system could be as low as 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is within the range of what consumers pay now."
I’m with Smith. I too am an addict and I so badly want to break my oil addiction through plug-in hybrid cars (powered by space solar?) and other alternative technologies. Yet all I see is a government proposing to bump up the supply of my drug through drilling. I truly don’t understand how that is supposed to help. Do you?
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Comments
Egbert Cheeseman — Jul 23 2008 10:03 PM
I saw space solar proposed 25 years ago (honest - it was a diorama at Morehead Planetarium at UNC Chapel Hill), and there must be some serious roadblocks, or it would have been done by now. Are we SURE that "beamed back" energy won't cook the atmosphere as it passes through? : ) S
Dick Myers — Jul 23 2008 10:44 PM
I'm an American which means I want my car to go fast, my air conditioning to run all day on high, and also eat steak! So cut the hyperbola on addiction. Remember the oil embargo? Now that was a problem. I think the NRDC should be promoting increased demand. Jack that price up and find out what the true elasticity of demand is. Just another way to articulate what Chris said.
Bruce Miller — Jul 24 2008 02:25 PM
Regardless of individual temperaments,If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times, solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equal to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and hydrogen gas for all!
After the millions of murders, and billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich daddie’s Arabic saber dancing boy, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep!
Sammy Wildwood — Jul 25 2008 12:41 PM
In light of the war, the lift on the domestic drilling moratorium, and the resistance to change, the addiction analogy seems pretty apt if not spot on. Physical dependence, ever-increasing tolerance, compulsive behavior despite harmful consequences to physical health, mental state, or social life. The signs are all there.
I'd like to take the analogy one step further [to an allegory perhaps?]. Because of our national history and our standing in the world, I see America, my beloved country, as a young celebrity blessed and cursed with all the complexities of young life in the fast lane. In a close-to-perfect world, America could be Charlie Sheen, whose acknowledgment of rock-bottom allowed him to realize that his work as an actor, and therefore his livelihood, was suffering as a result of his addiction, and the only way to rescue his career and credibility was to quit using. While his current life is not perfect [whose is?], he has become an outspoken advocate for breast cancer research and has revitalized his acting career. Not bad. In a much less-than-perfect world, America would be River Phoenix, one of the most spirited, capable, and talented young actors of the 1980s and early 90s, who blew his proverbial load on the sidewalk outside the Viper Room because he just wouldn't quit using despite all the warnings that he was heading for a disaster. And there were plenty of warnings.
The similarities are striking. Success at a very young age. Money. Power. Indulgence. Hedonism.
One star recovered. One didn't.
In the home of Hollywood, what kind of star is America going to be?
Michael Kroon — Jul 25 2008 02:52 PM
"Define Intervention"
In Mid-May, President Bush appealed to the Saudis for more oil. We looked like a rich junky, drunkly stumbling into the sketchy side of town to buzz our dealer's doorbell. He slammed the door in our face and yelled through the peep-hole, "You still haven't shot the sludge I gave you yesterday!"
The time to pump has passed. Our refineries can't process what they've already given us. For the White House, this attempt (and rebuke) at least provided some confusing PR amidst record price spikes and oil company profits – many trickling through this energy-ticklish administration (cough-Halliburton-cough).
Fearing the loss of a favored customer, the dealer reconsidered his castigation and pushed a couple crumbs under the door to stop our crying – 300,000 barrels of crumbs, to be exact.
They're smart to keep us from moving on to the rehab of renewables. T. Boone Pickens rightly calls this insanity the largest transfer of wealth in human history. We're subsidizing the addiction with our children's economic and ecological future, sneaking into their bedrooms to pawn off planetary playthings for another hit.
But we're too doped up to feel the guilt. With consumption barely slumping, it seems the pain at the pump just lets us know the drug is working. With the fix in, we languidly open our wallets and smile through drooping eyelids. "Here you go: $1 billion per week."
If that's not enough, we've decided to drill at home and boil some homegrown in our basement, probably blowing up the house in the process. Oil spill in the Mississippi? Let's take it to the coast lines! You mean there's something dirtier than oil? Hook me up some tar sands!
We're not at peak oil yet, but we've definitely hit rock-bottom.
And economists and climatologists are waiting at home for the intervention. "If you refuse to detoxify today, your relationship with the world will change in the following ways: http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/cost/contents.asp
Ben Carmichael — Jul 28 2008 11:45 AM
I think we all understand the pain of our addiction to oil. Just this weekend, I paid over $100 in gas to visit my family. But thankfully I wasn't driving an SUV.
I recently saw the very thing you describe happen - an SUV, riding the tail of a hybrid, and leaning on the horn. Now, I know not all SUV drivers are like that, but it does raise the question: what would we do if we could get rid that SUV?
Over at onefewer.com, Ryan Mickle is letting you do just that. I wrote about the issue over at On Earth.
http://tinyurl.com/5tqlfa
Keep the pace, Phil - slow and steady.
Best,
Ben