I tend to agree ...
... with Brian Janaszek, who writes this past week,I'm not sure who is worse – the Republicans who have given up on the free market (and the oil companies they love so well) or Democrats who have given up on environmental concerns in the name of lower prices. What we really need right now is a politician who will say what this country needs to hear: higher fuel prices are exactly the bitter medicine we need to get over our addiction to oil.
This subject isn't something I've given much directed attention to, but Brian's wish for a new national ideal for energy use fits my perspective, my broader sensibilities. To this end of a new national ideal, we sure could use a vigorous, ordinary-folks-oriented, green politics bound wholly to the presumption & commitments of neither the left nor the right. And we sure could use some honesty to go with power transactions in our capitals.
Well, these complaints are nothing new in a way, and surely no one expects any wide-spread shift toward common-sense, modest thinking in American politics – not when such a rich variety of short-term payoffs are there to be pursued through policy-making & trade at every level of public life. But who knows? – maybe this encroaching economic pressure will help clear a few heads anyway, and inspire yet something of the thinking smaller that's long awaited thoroughgoing introduction in the national mindset.
posted by paul bowman @ 4:15 PM
4 Comments:
Unfortunately it is the poor elderly who end up suffering the most- who cannot afford to heat their homes.
In general, I totally agree with you. We need something to shake us down and admit it:
Hi, I am America and I am addicted to oil.
"Hi America!"
The first step to to admit we have a problem.
Sarah, this calls for a lot more thought than I've really given it. But I don't know that there's any failure to acknowledge that there's a problem, or that oil commerce is a big part of what we find problematic. After all, our increasingly unpopular president is the one who's most recently joined in popularizing the line 'America is addicted to oil' — right?
But maybe fossil fuels aren't really what we should identify as our problem, in a way — maybe in fact the very things that trouble us, our inability to get energy from these fuels all that efficiently or without heavy environmental impact, and their near-term exhaustibility, could be regarded as a good, something to be grateful for. If oil weren't a worry, would we be better off? If we were dependent on some more sustainable energy resource to the degree we're dependent on oil, would we be altogether better off? It might be for our good, at least in a potential sense, that the fuel we've made ready use of has become so readily, in a few generations' time, a source of economic pressures.
The kind of thing we should be saying in a greater variety of ways, I think, is that we're addicted to spreading out — to ease of movement and ease of getting, most of us, a big chunk of space to call one's own. That'll smack as a too-European criticism to some, undoubtedly, and I'm conscious of ways to go wrong here. 'Green' to me doesn't necessarily mean a much more severe regulatory regime or thinking of economic stagnancy as better kind of risk for a society to accept than other sorts of risk. But I am looking for, if cultural progress is anything to hope for (about which I have uncertainties), a shift of mindset about the ways we use (up) space.
Paul- you are precisely right. Using ethenol rather than oil isn't going to do good on the environment either. (Imagine ALL that corn we'd have to grow and then process. THAT is a problem in and of itself.) We need to address the underlying problems. Why do we have to drive so much in the first place? Driving is thought to be so convenient, but while I am stuck in traffic, I envy the cyclist whizzing by. It isn't even very efficient or convenient anymore. Strip mall parking lots are a pain in the *** to navigate. You cannot park and go to more than one or two stores. Then lets say you want to go to a store across the street. You have to get in your car, drive in the opposite direction, make a U-turn and then park.. blah blah blah.
We need to reorganize our whole lives and our cities. This is a huge task for Americans. I don't think very many are willing to do it (though I don't think they realized that their current lifestyle is the cause of their depression.)
ug
Also, there is only so much effiency that we can extract from oil, due to one of the laws of thermodynamics- entrophy (or some such thing). Even if we ran our cars on water, there would be an inbalance of O2 in the air. Plants would die. Things could explode.
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