Why are Americans so crazy about oil?

Why are Americans so Crazy about Oil?

I watched the American rage over rising gas prices this spring with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation – sympathy for working people who can barely afford another cost of living increase and who have to drive to get to work – exasperation with all those other Americans who bought gas-guzzling Hummers, Expeditions, Siennas etc. and are now complaining about how much they cost to fill up.

Then I watched the spectacle of Rudy Guiliani cheerleading Republican conventioners in a chant of “Drill, baby, drill” and felt a mixture of stunned amazement and outright disgust.

“What is it about oil that makes Americans so crazy?” I wondered. A gallon of milk goes over the four dollar mark, and people grumble but they don't get on CNN and threaten their lawmakers with public mayhem. Gas prices hit that point, and people are ready to riot.

It may be the gas prices are one of those “in your face” costs of daily living that we can't help but notice. Stores may bury the equivalent cost of various brands of peanut butter on those little tags you can barely read, or keep prices the same but artfully reshape your box of cereal or your ice-cream container to be a little smaller. You barely notice, and for the most part, you keep buying.

Gas prices, by contrast, are posted in eye-popping dimensions on huge signs for all to view and to seize on as a source of outrage. I doubt that many people can tell you how much the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are costing per week ($2 billion) or how big the current deficit is ($370 billion so far in 2008), but just about any American can tell you how much he or she paid per gallon at the pump at the last fill-up.

But it's not just that so many Americans are irrationally fixed on the price of gas; a majority are also displaying an equal degree of illogic when it comes to reducing energy costs because they focus primarily on the supply side, and then pick the longest range solution – more domestic oil drilling.

This is ironic since the most recent fall in oil prices and accompanying declines in gasoline prices have resulted from a three-year decline in the number of miles Americans drive. In other words, simple conservation (and perhaps declining economic activity worldwide) have already had a far more dramatic impact on prices than any other action either politicians or oil companies could take. On September 9th, OPEC member voted to cut overall output by more than 500,000 barrels a day as a reaction to falling demand. Yet no leader in Washington is out there cheering the American consumer for doing the right thing.

It's enough to make economists wring their hands in despair. Reduce what you consume and producers have to cut their prices. “It's supply and demand, stupid,” one might image their slogan saying.

But what is worse that the lack of understanding and appreciation given to energy conservation is the reckless rhetoric of Republican leaders like Rudy Guiliani, and sadly, John McCain, who seeme determined to seduce Americans into thinking that they can have their SUVs and cheap gas, and that “drilling at home” will not only lower gas prices but create an energy independent America. Oh, and they'll throw in a bridge for good measure.

Senator McCain, who has missed eight votes to extend alternative energy tax cuts, including one that took place while he was in Washington, is not only missing the boat on a new energy industry, but even doing it at the expense of potential jobs in his home state. As Pulitzer Prize winning author, Thomas Friedman, pointed out in a recent interview with Terry Gross, the biggest solar project is ready to launch outside of Phoenix, Arizona, but Senator McCain hasn't bother to show up to vote on an extension that could bring clean energy and good manufacturing jobs to his constituents, (Fresh Air, 9/8/08).

Just as Americans wisely rejected Senator McCain's proposed summer gas tax “holiday” as a cheap gimmick, they should cast a gimlet eye at his proposal that we can drill our way out of our oil addiction. In an election year, politicians will claim you can have your cake and eat it too, but unless you want a severe case of buyer's remorse, voters should pay more attention to who is funding those politicians than to any promises they make.

As The Washington Post reported, “campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Senator John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling,” (7/27/08, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/26/AR2008072601891.html).

Contributions rose to $1.1 million in one month from $208,000 in May, $283,000 in April, and $116,000 in March.

The solution to America's energy needs doesn't have an easy answer. It will require creative thinking, multiple explorations of new cleaner energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydrogen, natural gas, biofuels, and carbon capture. It will also require “sacrifice,” on the part of the American consumer, if you can call the conservation efforts so many are already taking part in a “sacrifice.”

But if conservation isn't sexy – it still is the cheapest and most effective solution we have at hand. The least we can ask of our leaders and of our presidential candidates is that they encourage conservation rather than undermine or mock these efforts. They also need to promise voters that their decisions on energy policy will be determined by the advice of the best and brightest among our scientists, economists, and engineers, not the slickest sales pitches of lobbyists representing the old energy industries (oil, gas, coal, and nuclear).

Americans may find the price of gas infuriating, but they shouldn't let that rage make them crazy. At least not crazy enough to fall for the political huckstering we saw at the Republican convention and in the false promises too many politicians are making about the effects of oil drilling.

Because this election is about more that the high price of oil and gas. It's an opportunity for Americans to lead an energy revolution and reinvigorate our economy or find ourselves still trapped in our old addiction while Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and the like laugh all the way to the bank and keep on writing campaign checks to John McCain and the Grand Old Party.