It's no longer news that oil is above $100 a barrel. In fact just yesterday the New York Times had an article on how oil had topped $116. By the end of that same day, it had edged up to almost $120. And the big news is there is no big news.
What was striking about this latest milestone was what didn’t happen: there was no shortage of oil, no sudden embargo, no exporter turning off its spigot.
Odds are the slope will continue up from here. However, there's a fair degree of speculation and concern over international stability built into the current price, probably something on the order of $25 a barrel. Just think of it as the Iraq War Oil Tax. That speculative cost could collapse suddenly. Oil prices just might even fall to $70 or lower -- a price that itself would have seemed high a very short time ago.
But it won't happen for long, it won't mean that those predicting peak oil are wrong, and it won't mean that we can joyfully go back to our SUVs. Not only are there environmental and national security concerns of continuing our dependence on oil, oil prices will go higher. Why? Because there are so more straws being jabbed into the pool.
Producers are struggling to pump as much as they can to quench the thirst not only of the developed world, but fast-growing developing nations like China and India, the two most populous countries. To many experts, the steadily rising price underscored longer-term fears about the future of a system that has supplied cheap oil for more than a century.
"This is the market signaling there is a problem," said Jan Stuart, global oil economist at UBS, "that there is a growing difficulty to meet demand with new supplies."
Here's an important point: don't expect any announcement of "huge new oil fields" to solve this problem.
First, most new fields fizzle. Putting one or two exploration wells into a formation and projecting a zillion barrels of oil does not make them actually exist. The largest oil field ever discovered... gets discovered about every six months. So whether it's off the coast of Brazil or freshly exposed by melting ice in Greenland, the truth is none of these fields is likely to live up to its publicity.
But let's say they do. Let's say someone discovers the next Ghawar. Problems solved? Not at all. it will take years to bring any new field into production. By that time, many existing fields -- such as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay and Mexico's Cantarell (and maybe even the actual Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) -- are likely to be out of business. Oil fields come and go quite rapidly, and the truth is that the rate of discovery now is way down from where it was a few decades ago. Much more production will be moving out of the market than will be moving in, and unless trends are drastically reversed, demand will continue to increase.
We can not drill our way out of this problem. We can't refinery ourselves out of this problem. We can't produce ourselves out of this problem.
So we build nuclear plants, right? A few new nukes and crisis averted. Only we can't solve this problem that way. Not by building nuclear plants, or coal-fired plants, or even sowing a thousand wind farms. Oil is a transportation issue, not an electricity-on-the-grid issue. To reduce our need for oil, we need to reduce the number of multi-ton vehicles used to shuttle individuals between homes and offices.
And that's the very good news. Because consumption of oil is, at its heart, a social issue. There's no Second Law of Petrodynamics that states every human being must have 20 gallons of high test to get through the day. Sure, it will be great to have plug-in hybrids and full bore EVs on the road, but we don't have to wait until then to tackle this problem. We can choose to end the oil crisis, and it involves no technological breakthroughs at all.
The solution lies in making choices as boring as picking up that fluorescent light bulb. The answer is conservation.
- Drive less.
- Take public transit.
- Walk.
- If it's too far to walk, use a bike.
- If it's too far to bike, and there no public transportation, car pool.
- If you can't car pool, use a smaller, more efficient vehicle.
- If you have a long commute, move closer to work.
- If you can't move closer, take a closer job.
- If you can't get a different job, see if you can telecommute.
It really is that simple. Which of course, doesn't mean it will be easy. We're accustomed to jumping in our personal battleships and cruising the highway at speeds just less than supersonic every time we get a craving for a Slurpee. Making significant changes to oil consumption requires a sacrifice of one of the things Americans value most: convenience, and no one -- not government, not industry -- can really do as much as you can by simply
parking it.
Sure, it's going to be painful. There's a big temptation to deliver a nah-nah-nah, since many groups (including our own Energize America) advocated for an increase in the gas tax back when gas was much cheaper, with the resulting funds to be put directly to development of public transport and addressing issues that would reduce the need for oil. Even on Daily Kos people screamed that not one penny was acceptable. Now gas is closing on $4, the economy is being squeezed, and every dollar is going to Exxon instead of a solution. Plus you have J. Sidney "Whiplash" McCain III suggesting that the existing gas taxes be suspended, so we can enjoy an infrastructure debt that makes the Iraq War bills seem laughably small.
There's a lot left to do. We have to rethink a delivery network that's focused on trucks, even over distances where there are more energy-efficient alternatives. We have to get serious about the use of rail transport for both goods and people. We have to break the habit of flying for meetings that could be done over the phone or on the web. We have to put leaner, greener, lighter vehicles onto the road in place of the heavy oil burners we use now. If, sometime far down the road, we actually have enough electric vehicles out there to affect demand on the grid, we might even need to build a power plant. But not yet, and certainly not first.
If you've been waiting for that call to sacrifice, the one that Bush never gave after 9/11, here it is: drive less. Want a good starting target? With gas rationing during World War II, each family was allowed four gallons a week. Let's start there. See if you can ration yourself -- before the price at the pump does it for you.
