Tfgray’s Weblog

Just as a thought experiment, get three identical cylinders: paper towel rolls, cans of soup, whatever. Stand them up in a straight line on a table. Now get down on their level and walk around the table (or put them on a Lazy Susan, if you have one.) Looked at from one point of view, they appear to be one object. But move just a little in any direction, and you notice that they are, indeed, three separate things.

Hold that thought.

Let’s go back in history a bit. Not to minimized our grandfathers’ sacrifices in WWII, or the”self-evident” fact that our values are better than Hitler’s, or our geographic advantage, if you have to pick one thing that allowed the Allies to win, it was oil. In a giant mechanized war, we had the fuel for the war machines. The Axis ran out of gas, literally.

So what does WWII have to do with paper towel rolls ?

The oil industry was the central pillar of America’s victory and the half-century of American dominance that followed. Once the war was over, we built a brilliant and prosperous culture based upon those vast reserves. The industry made massive profits and these flowed the the shareholders. Keep in mind that most shares are owned by a tiny minority of shareholders. Fortunes were made. Those three objects: the good of the country, the good of the oil industry, and the good of the wealthy and powerful individuals who owned those companies were perfectly aligned.

But times change. In 1971 half of American oil reserves were gone. Two years later, in 1973, we experienced the first Oil Shock. That stuff we were accustomed to buying at 30 cents a gallon suddenly cost a buck, and we stood in line to get it. The table turned, and those unified objects were seen to be separate. The oil companies, with their contracts in the Middle East, still made money, more, in fact, than ever. Their shareholders made money. The nation took a bath, whether you measure that in the whupping motorists’ wallets took, the effect on our balance of trade, or the shift in power from Washington to Riyadh, Teheran, Baghdad.

The longer as the United States allows itself to be stuck in the age of oil and drags its feet in the development of renewables, the further we will fall behind, the more our ecomony will bleed, and the weaker and more dependent on the vagaries of foreign politics we will become. We cannot remain a world power when the source of the power we rely upon comes increasingly from outside our borders, when the cheap, easy-to-access-and-ship-to-market domestic reserves rapidly diminish. Even if we were to drill every inch of soil, every inch of the ocean floor within our jurisdiction, it wouldn’t be as cheap as Colonel Drake’s well in Titusville, dug by hand and its contents sold for 10 cents a barrel. Even Michelle Bachmann’s $2 a gallon target is out of reach. Prodction costs are just too high. If prices fall too far, producers will shut down supply until the prices rise enough to insure profitability.

Tomorrow NPR will air a segment on China’s bid to be the world’s dominant force in renewable energy. You can hear it between 6:30 and 7 pm on your local NPR affiliate. I urge you to listen. And while you are listening, keep in mind that all the opposition to funding for renewable energy development, all the opposition to Climate Change science, comes from the Oil Industry, and, despite their protestations of patriotism, is designed to maximize their profits and political dominance.