For the past forty years the term Energy Crisis has been a recurring staple in the headlines of US media. It is recurring because it always somehow goes away for a while and the American public manages to convince themselves that there really is no tomorrow. We have had full an adequate warning of the problem since the oil shocks of the 1970s. Yet we have done very little to change or reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Our economy and our lifestyles are stuck to them like a tar baby.
This diary is the introduction to a series that will look at how we got ourselves into the mess that we have been wallowing in for over a generation. It will then attempt to take a hard cold look at the economic realities of doing anything significant about the mess.
In the summer of 2010 the American public has once again been forced into the awareness that there is indeed an energy crisis.
British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon well exploded and has been producing an uncontrolled flow of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for two months. We have only an inkling of the eventual dimensions of the environmental catastrophe that is going to result form this disaster. In multiple ways it will also be an economic upheaval with a negative impact.
With 5% of the world's population the US consumes 20% of its energy production. The notion that we can have all the energy we want is deeply ingrained in our national psyche. It is not just a matter of such quaint American customs like Richard Nixon turning down the air conditioning so that he could have a cozy fire on a summer's day. Our entire economy and infrastructure is predicated on the assumption of an infinitely available supply of cheap energy.
In most parts of the country it is impossible to conduct life's basic necessities without driving a car.
The oil shocks produced by the Arab oil boycott in the 1970s first brought us up against the reality that the economics of oil are not as simple as we would like them to be. That was a big enough upheaval that people actually began seeking things like more energy efficient cars. However, OPEC got its prices up and it all seemed to blow over. Bigger cars and more freeways soon became the order of the day again.
The great economic bubble at the dawn of the 21st C brought us the spectacle of large exurban real estate developments and gas guzzling SUVs. When the bubble began to produce a sharp rise in oil prices, there was an SUV crisis.
The bubble burst creating the Great Recession and gas prices went down a bit and have remained fairly stable for the past 18 months. Americans are now "grateful" to be paying only $3 a gal.
Now Americans have what is both an energy crisis and an environmental crisis squarely in their laps. For all of the demands that somebody do something about it, there are very definite limits to what can be done. There is going to be a great deal more oil released into the Gulf before it is stopped. There is going to be extensive damage to the environment. The open questions are how much and how far. The fishing, tourism and oil drilling industries in the Gulf region are all being impacted. Yet many business and political leaders are criticizing president Obama's temporary ban on new offshore drilling.
America as a nation has never been willing to take an honest look at its energy policies. There has always been the deeply held conviction that we deserve to live well just because we are Americans. Something will turn up and save us from our fate. There are of course always people who claim to have a painless solution to the problem. Ethanol was one of the latest entries in that contest. Not only does making it from food grains disrupt the food supply, but making it from any sort of plant material consumes large amounts of energy from some other source.
The only glimmer of a really viable alternative is the prospect of clean renewable energy sources. The two leading prospects at this point are solar and wind energy. However, there are many economic and technological hurdles in making a significant shift in that direction. Had we made a serious beginning of that process 40 years ago, we would doubtless have made considerable progress by now. We did not. The question that confronts us today is are we finally ready to make such a beginning now. I think that is still very much an open question.
The next installment in this series will take a step back in history and look at how our energy dependent culture has evolved.