Drilling for more oil = enabling the addicts (us, that is)

[thatcrazycajun]

With thanks to my pal wcg for the link, here is the story on how a West Virginia US congressman has pointed out that the oil industry, even as it whines to him and his fellow solons about how much cheaper gasoline would get if they'd just let them drill more in currently prohibited areas, is sitting on an acreage of permissible federal land the size of Colorado (!!) it has already leased for drilling and has not even used.

But all of this is beside the point, far as I'm concerned. The point is this: When a person addicted to alcohol, cocaine, heroin or other drugs is behaving self-destructively due to his/her addiction, you do not simply point them in the direction of a new source for their drug of choice. You try to help them overcome the addiction, if you can, and if you can't, at the very least avoid engaging in any sort of enabling behavior. Anyone who's been in a 12-step program (as I have) can tell you that.

As even our former-oilman President has had to admit recently, we as a nation have a monkey on our collective back...a greasy, oily, money-sucking, air-and-water-fouling, globe-warming, economy-sapping, foreign-policy-warping addiction. We need to be doing anything and everything we can to find ways other than petroleum to power our vehicles and machinery, and we've needed to do this for years, if not decades. We had the first warning back in the 1970s, with gas-station lines for miles and Congress enacting a national speed limit of 55 MPH on penalty of highway-funding withdrawal for any state that refused to honor it. Then the energy crisis subsided, the limit was repealed under Reagan in the name of "states' rights" and "free market principles," and we forgot all about the trouble as we started buying SUVs and other gas-guzzlers.

We need to be reorienting our infrastructure around alternative fuels, and working to develop and produce them nonstop: ethanol, hydrogen, biodiesel, electricity and whatever else we can come up with—anything but oil. Only when our economy is totally gasoline-free will we be free of all the unwanted side effects of petroleum dependency, of which $4+-per-gallon gas is by far the most minor. (I'm not saying we shouldn't have plastics, which I know full well come from petroleum; but our use of it should be limited to that, and we should also work on alternatives in that area.)

The answer is not more drilling. The answer is to quit—just fucking quit. Now. Maybe not cold turkey, but certainly start working toward getting rid of the habit. And after we've kicked it ourselves, we need to work on helping those emerging nations like India and China do the same.

Comments

[luscious-words.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

We also need to be careful *which* alternatives we develop. I'm pretty well convinced that biodiesel and ethanol are *NOT* where it's at long-term; we simply can't produce enough of the stuff to get off oil altogether. I think Stirling-engined hybrids is probably one way to start... and frankly? I think we gotta give up large airliners eventually, replacing them with trains for short-haul and suborbital rockets for long.... we use a buttload of Jet-A for transport and there isn't a viable replacement for that. (We could use electrics for short-haul; modelers have been doing it for years. But transcontinental? Not likely.)

But, yeah. Getting off the gas-habit is a Good Thing, and the sooner the better.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Give the folks at http://www.teslamotors.com/ a whack of money and a partnership with one or more of the big three to bring down the cost of their vehicle.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

I think you've identified the key problem in your last paragraph.

We are simultaneously telling the world that oil addiction is evil while failing to do shit about our own addiction.

Kicking the oil habit (or at least building places that don't require gasoline - a big subset of oil consumption) isn't hard. It's shit-easy. You can get any 10 year old kid in Holland to explain to you how to redesign street-by-street any place in America to be so convenient for cycling that you don't really mind that gas is $10/gallon.

Americans just are looking for the new fantasy techno-gizmo to solve the problem, when solutions have existed for decades that work fine. But our culture biases us towards only high-tech solutions, perhaps because we can't conceive of giving up the suburban, consumerist mentality that isn't compatible with reducing energy consumption.

The REAL Answer

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

As I've told before, there's a French company called MDI that's made a car engine that runs off compressed air. The only oil it uses is vegetable oil--as a lubricant. Attach that motor to an electric automotive power train and sell the results as SERIES HYBRIDS that can refuel at any air compressor, whether at the corner station or in the back yard. Or attach a portable compressor to the car and fill the tank on batery power when the car isn't moving. This elimates the petrol problem most efficiently. But of course since I'm not a corporate drudge or celebrity nobody will listen to me. Oh, the torture of genius.