"Fossil fuel." Them's fightin' words if you're Dick Cheney and George Bush, who have sent off almost 4,000 young men and women to their deaths in a war for energy.
Unfortunately, for many environmentalists, them's not fightin' words, but dirty words. Greenies spit out "fossil fuels" with about as much contempt as an evangelist cries "satanic corruption" or a doctor intones "bubonic plague." By talking this way, environmentalist make a fetish of oil itself, ascribing to it inherent evil, as if it had some sinister power in and of itself, which it obviously doesn't.
By indulging in the magical sort of thinking we also project onto fossil fuel our contempt for people who deal with it, like Cheney. Now while all this name-calling may provide psychological satisfaction, it's not very useful for intelligent discussion about fossil fuels. By looking at oil like it were the blood of Satan--coal as Cheney's spleen, and natural gas as something that fills the gaping void in Bush's soul--we avoid thinking seriously about these fuels. And by not thinking seriously about them, we avoid dealing with economic and ecological reality.
Fossil fuels are one of the greatest blessings of nature that humanity has ever enjoyed. By powering the industrial revolution, they have been a key to liberating us from endless cycles of backbreaking drudgery and toil; they have revolutionized agriculture and helped create an unprecedented quality of life for several billion people. Anybody who doubts this, or who is nostalgic for some pre-industrial Eden, has never dug ditches by hand or sawed wood by hand or moved tons of manure with pitchforks and shovels, day in and day out.
Fossil fuels, contrary to this green superstition, have also been an environmental blessing. They have freed up millions of acres of land once cleared to feed horses and mules; they have eliminated the widespread use of firewood, a cause of deforestation and a source of deadly pollution. Fossil fuels power the machinery to construct huge systems to deliver clean water and safe sewage systems, and far cleaner and more efficient transportation than anything provided by millions of draft animals. On top of this fossil fuels have made life safer and more exciting in hundreds of ways, whether by enabling us to travel to national parks or simply read by a clean light.
Once you appreciate the immense blessings of fossil fuel and develop a bit of respect for it, you also understand the importance of using it as prudently and efficiently as possible. There's a limited supply of fossil fuel, and that supply is getting more and more difficult and expensive to extract. Long before we knew there was such a thing as global warming, we understood this, in the 1970s when we passed some tough energy-saving laws. We realized that our profligate use of fossil fuels as a colossal waste of money that could be better spent on other projects, and we feared what dependence on foreign oil could do to the economy. We soon forgot why we passed these laws, and new generations roared away from reality in SUVs to find refuge in oversize, overheated, overcooled, overlit houses, burning through energy as if there were no tomorrow.
Unfortunately, the appreciation of the value and significance of fossil fuel is missing in all too many discussions of energy today. There's a tremendous amount of talk about developing new sources and technologies to replace fossil fuel, going beyond it, and ending the Age of Carbon. And no one can deny that we have to find safer and more reliable substitutes.
But in dreaming of a future beyond fossil fuel, we have lost sight of the quickest, cheapest, and easiest energy solution, which is to drastically reduce its use—to practice intense conservation of this precious resource. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on this, much discussion now dwells not on what can be done here and now, but on technologies, or on existing technologies that will take a very long time to implement. We are living with a pie-in-the-sky attitude that fees us unrealistic dreams of a clean-energy future. If "oil" is a dirty word, "renewable" or "alternative" fuels have become sacred mantras. Merely uttering them promises a heaven on earth that, unlike traditional heavens, doesn't demand the slightest reform or repentance as an entrance requirement. The piety of some energy disciples insulates these fuels from questions about the actual on-the-ground processes, and this immunity from skeptics is reflected in public policy. Billions of subsidies are already handed out for ethanol ($3.4 billion in 2006 alone), and there are billions more to on the way because new energy bill calls for production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022.
The aura of "renewable" blinded us to the reality of corn-based ethanol, namely that it requires fossil fuel for its production, and only ends up yielding 20 to 30% more energy than the fossil fuel contained in the first place. There is, of course, much discussion of cellulosic ethanol, which doesn't require nearly as much energy to make, but little probing of how many years it will take and at what cost before it can actually be manufactured. Nor has there been anything like adequate discussion of the effects of either kind of ethanol production on farmland, the environment, or on food prices. It reminds one of the glory days of nuclear power, touted as the ultimate energy solution, billed as Atoms for Peace, in which the terrible energy of nuclear destruction was converted to a warm friend of humanity, the ultimate in the ancient cry to beat swords into plowshares. Environmentalist themselves were so bedazzled that they not only failed to question the claims of the high priests of atomic energy but actively supported them.
The new energy law, the Energy Independence and Security Act OF 2007, while a small step in the right direction, reflects this problem in other ways. It demands very little in terms of serious energy conservation beyond some improvements in building and appliance efficiency, and doesn’t even call for tax credits for solar and wind energy. Its main focus is on automobiles and renewable fuels. It calls for an increase in average fuel economy from 26.4 miles per gallon today to 35 by 2020. This is a great improvement, but if we continue to put as many more cars on the road and driving them as many more miles, we will not save one drop in our total fuel consumption.
The stark fact is that although we doubled the requirement for fuel economy in 1974, we are burning almost 50 billion gallons more fuel in cars, light trucks, and SUVs than then—139.2 billion in 2005 compared with 90.1 billion in 1975. Now some of that total almost 140 billion total is because of the SUV loophole, which lets SUVs to count as light trucks, thereby allowing them to get lower mileage. But even if every single light truck and SUV got the same mileage as required by cars, we STILL would have burned 120.1 billion gallons of motor fuel, or 30 billion more than in 1975.
The reason is simple math: We now have almost 100 million more of these vehicles on the road and we're driving them a lot farther, thanks to suburban sprawl, lousy public transportation, lack of carpooling, and just plain laziness (40% of all car trips are less than 2 miles!) The average passenger car traveled 9,309 miles in 1975; today's car logs over 3,000 more, at 12,375. Some observers have noted that the huge improvement in fuel economy might even have caused increased oil consumption. By using far less oil than we would have, supply kept up with demand, keeping prices low enough to encourage more consumption.
The jubilation over the energy bill is merely silly if we put all our faith in "renewable" fuels and better technology, while refusing to face the very simple fact that we have take conservation seriously, and drive a whole lot less than we do now. What is true for transportation is true for every other sector of the economy. As long as we delude ourselves into believing that we don't have to bite the bullet, we'll keep on building homes that are too big, and they'll burn twice the energy they should if we don't exercise common sense and discipline in heating, cooling, and lighting them. The energy bill creates that illusion that we can go on living like fools and get away with it. We need to conserve energy, and we need a serious national campaign to show us how.
NEXT: Gas rationing and a change in energy pricing structure?
