Power For The People

If there was ever a time when the change should have happened, it was 1973. What change, you ask? A change in our view of foreign oil.

America backed Israel in its fight for survival amid Arab neighbors who were -- at that time -- all too glad to contemplate wiping it from the map. Our support put us at odds with those nations, who were members of the oil cartel OPEC. OPEC proceeded to squeeze oil supplies and prices, resulting in shortages, long line at filling stations, and empty gas pumps. Despite our continued output of domestic sources, our insatiable desire for oil could not be quenched at the time from our own sources alone. It had not been that way for a long time.

The crisis was a warning, which would be echoed again in 1979 when the overthrow of the Shah of Iran led to tightening oil supplies and more price spikes. As long as we were dependent on foreign oil sources for any significant fraction of our needs, the United States would be imperiled. And now, with tensions throughout the Middle East, the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran, inefficient and expensive tar sand oil being shoved at us, and the aftermath of a horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we still do not seem to be learning our lesson.

It's this simple: oil is finite.

It exists in only so many places on Earth, there is only so much of it, and no more is being created. Hundreds of millions of acres of deciduous forests being roamed by lumbering dinosaur behemoths are no longer being buried under volcanic ash and sediment from oceans, lakes, and rivers, compressed and boiled in the pressure cooker that is the Earth's crust. The easiest sources of oil are now long gone; we have to extend our depth and range to places foreboding and inhospitable, at the risk of further environmental damage, in order to squeeze out and sop up what precious little is left beneath our feet. We have no idea how much there is left, and what little is left is now being squabbled over constantly, as nations that covet the precious black liquid vie with other nations for the limited supply, and the nations controlling the supply are in positions to blackmail those other nations. It is a ghastly feast of carrion birds on a 50 million-plus year-old carcass, that is slowly being picked clean.

So, as you see, four dollar per gallon gas, or five, or six, or twenty... that is not the true enemy, here. No, we are hoist upon our own petard, victims of our own selfish greed. Almost 39 years have passed since we were warned in no uncertain terms that our dependence on outside sources of oil would be our undoing. We have fought wars, toppled governments, made deals, build gas-swallowing vehicles, and lived a life as if 1973 never happened. In the process, we have taken the natural climatological system of the Earth, and have begun to modify its operation, introducing back into it carbon dioxide that had managed to stay long buried as hydrocarbons deep beneath the crust.

No, high gas prices are a symptom, not a cause. We are the cause. We created this nightmare for ourselves through our shortsightedness. The worst part: it didn't have to reach this point.

Solar power technology was born in the 1950s. It came into its own in the 1960s, as a means to power spacecraft that didn't require them to carry along heavy and expensive fuels. By the 1970s, the technology was reaching commercial viability...

But we were not ready to give up on that light, sweet crude!

Imagine this: based on standard calculations, the Earth's surface receives roughly 3.2 million exajoules per year of solar radiation. Do not be frightened by the units, but suffice it to say, that number is enormous, though tiny compared to the Sun's total radiation output. For comparison, in the year 2005, our global energy consumption was a paltry 463 exajoules per year. A little math shows us that the Sun poured down on the surface of our planet approximately 6900 time the energy we consumed in one year!!!

So, just think about it for a moment, like we did not in 1973: even owing to imperfect conversion and less than 100% efficiency, if we had begun placing solar panels on every roof, of every type of building, in every corner of the country, we could have reached a state by this year, where a tiny fraction of energy would come from any fossil fuel: oil, coal, natural gas, etc. Electric cars would not be a environmentalist-inspired novelty -- they would dominate the roads! No home would have to worry about not having enough heating oil for a rough Winter, or having the gas or electric cut off because they could not pay the bill! Power outages due to storms would be severely reduced in scope. Air condition could be run at whatever temperature you wanted! The air would be cleaner!

But no.

Our nation's heritage has been littered with men and women with grand vision, showing us the way to the future, only to have the path diverted by a citizenry unwilling to deviate from the status quo. Though many may whine about the price of gas or home heating oil, though we may complain about the noise and pollution caused by internal combustion, though our heart aches at the wars we send our young people off to die in over in oil rich regions of the world, we are, in the main, unwilling to take the simplest steps to end these things. Conservatism is the cancer that eats away at our nation, convincing us the past was so grand and warning us against a future they cannot see or control. It fills our heads with a malaise, infuses our bodies with an inertia from which we cannot seem to shake ourselves. The last time we seem to have roused from our conservative torpor, we sent men to the Moon.

Then we ran out of gas.

The Blood Of Ages Unknown

It pours out, staining the water, hurtling into the quiescent and fragile sea, like blood from an artery opened by a careless tick of the knife. It threatens everything around it; a malevolent, oozing, capricious flood, seeping into every place it can, mocking us as it floats atop the waves or rolls up onto the sand.

It is oil.

The lifeblood of modern civilization, the "black gold" that drives industry, creates electricity, and allows us to span great distances in eye-blinks. Rich, thick, dark, and oh so valuable, coveted by many and held by few. Like gold or spices in the distant past, a treasure worth fighting and dying for, capable of making the poor man rich and the rich man king. It has played a part in every major war, starting with WWII, when control of oil determined the fate of the Nazi empire and condemned Japan to failure when they could not hold onto it. The Cold War was as much about oil as ideology, for resources were important, and those with adequate supplies of them gained the upper hand. Here, the Middle East was carved up, countries taking sides in a war that only stood to make them rich, as each side vied for the affections of those who held the precious fluid.

With that, lines were drawn, oaths sworn, and the seeds of future wars planted. As Vietnam ground down the resolve of a nation, the OPEC countries began to squeeze it further still, condemning America and its allies for the support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. For the first time, without adequate domestic supplies of oil, Americans felt what it was like to be at the mercy of the oil barons. Gas lines and heating oil shortages were just a taste of the power of nations holding all the cards. After 1973, with the descent of Richard Nixon and the rise of Jimmy Carter, an effort was made to turn back our demand for this tantalizing, addictive, but ultimately ruinous substance. Conservation was key, and for a while America was willing to follow the script, as long as it lead to cheaper oil. With usage plummeting, prices plummeted, and the reign of cheap oil caused an abandonment of conservation for the excess of the SUV and need for speed. We drove ourselves right back into the hands of the oil producing nations willingly, as sheep to the slaughterhouse.

Our short-sightedness has condemned us for decades; with free, renewable, easily-tapped energy flowing all around us on the wind, in the waves, and from the sky, we tied our future to a finite substance, found only in certain areas, which required enormous effort to reach as supplies dwindled, and whose by-products may be upsetting the delicate balance of Earth's planetary ecosystem. Hungry for more and more, heedless of the true cost, only concerned with the impact on our wallets, we were content to look the other way.

Now, our hubris is laid bare in a destroyed oil platform, a growing oil slick, and wetlands and wildlife coated in oil. While every side points fingers, and scrambles to find a solution, more and more oil gushes forth, a geyser of death, and the blood is on our hands. To say that the Gulf oil spill is a disaster is to minimize its impact, for while not as explosive as an atom bomb, or as violent as a volcanic eruption, nor even as mind-wrenching as a tsunami, the slow, inexorable spread of oil is devastating on a scale still untold, for the oil yet may escape and be spread by ocean currents to the far reaches.

That the nation that put men on the Moon cannot muster the technical acumen and resource to stem this deadly flow is testament to the fall from grace of our mighty nation, for a country that has spent so much time preeminent in science and technology, now finds itself hamstrung. The vain attempts to stem the flow show organization akin to consulting a Ouija board, and are inconceivable in their ridiculousness. Do the oil companies so dismiss the chances of such things happening that they are not prepared? Does it not occur to them, especially after some of the epic oil-related disasters of the past, to be prepared, with knowledge and supplies, to combat such a thing? Is the government of the United States that disconnected form reality, that they did not pursue regulation and monitoring with sufficient vigor? These are questions for the future; the question now remains: how do we make it stop?

Ultimately, though blame may be handed out, rightly or wrongly, the blame lies squarely with us, and our rapacious consumerism. The plastics we use, the gasoline we buy, the oil we use to heat our homes, the gas intensive vehicles we drive -- all of this contributes to this moment. When we ask "How could this happen?", we need only look in a mirror to see where it starts. We must curb our energy use, tap the free resources available to us for power generation, demand Congress and the White House stop pandering to the oil companies and bring them to heel, and above all, we must become cognizant that humanity is only as strong as its decides to be, and while humanity ties its fate to oil, we remain sitting at the edge of a precipice, staring into an abyss that may spell our doom as a species.