This paper was originally written by me in the fall of 2002. I am not a prophet. I'm merely a student of what is going on around me. Don't be fooled. The current drastic reduction of the price of gas at the pump is an anomaly fueled by the reduction in demand as the economy heads toward recession; which in turn, ironically, was fueled in part by the high price of crude oil a few months ago. The general trend in the price of fuel is ever upward. In other words, don't worry about the low price of gas today, we'll get over it. I believe my basic argument is sound and that it still behooves us to get on with the program of securing the future of our energy supply.
DANCE BAND ON THE TITANIC
Are we cruising headlong through the night toward an iceberg? On an April night in 1912, the passengers and crew of the Royal Merchant Ship Titanic danced and worked with trust in their technology, and high hopes. Long before dawn, two thirds of them – trust betrayed and hopes abandoned – would be dead in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
“Global oil production will probably peak sometime during this decade. After the peak, the world’s production of crude oil will fall, never to rise again. The world will not run out of energy, but developing alternative energy sources on a large scale will take at least 10 years.” (2)
Just as we know fossil fuels will not last forever, the Captain of the Titanic knew there was a risk of icebergs. The danger was not ignored; it was underestimated. Gregg Easterbrook won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in 1980 for a series of articles revealing oil supplies to be more ample than thought. He is now on the other side of the issue warning us that, “commitment to alternative energy forms makes sense now, when there is time to work on the problem rationally.” (3) Growth in supply will peak and then begin to decline, while world population continues to grow. Declining supply mixed with increasing demand will fuel a rise in price. If we underestimate the danger, that rise in price could be surprisingly rapid and crippling.
Many passengers on the Titanic were not even aware there had been a collision, and Captain Smith so underrated the jeopardy that he didn’t even order the lifeboats readied until nearly a half an hour after the collision. (4) They did not perceive the magnitude of what had just happened. In like manner, there are perceptual obstacles to overcome before our need for preparation becomes clear.
The first obstacle is “cultural inertia.” Like the RMS Titanic, our modern industrial culture – while well decorated, full of fun loving people, and fast moving in a straight line – is ponderously slow to answer the helm and change direction. The officers and crew of the Titanic were aware of the danger; the iceberg was spotted before the collision, but there was simply not enough time to turn the unwieldy ship. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the circumstances and details of our lives, and distracted by our amusements. Most of us have “full plates,” and simply don’t take the time to be involved in weighty matters of far-reaching significance. Will we overcome our apathy and alter our course in time, or rest on our assumption that the experts are handling the problem quickly enough?
The second obstacle is our “conditioned skepticism.” Ironically, passed predictions are now part of the present problem. There has been a series of predictions – based on the ever-changing estimates of known reserves – crying “wolf” about the end of the reserves of crude oil. This series of false prophecies has conditioned us to ignore warnings of oil shortages. In the mean time, oil exploration technology has been growing more sophisticated. Enough has been learned about how oil was formed and stored in the Earth’s crust to reach some inescapable conclusions about the limits of reserves. Some petroleum industry executives are becoming concerned with developing alternative sources of energy. (5) Are they becoming concerned enough, quickly enough? Remember, in The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the wolf did eventually show up.
The third obstacle is “fatal optimism.” In the oil industry, only ten percent of exploration wells ever produce anything. It is an industry that fosters incurable optimism. If you are easily discouraged, you don’t hang around the oil business too long. This explains the relative silence of the industry about shortages; they have been inoculated against discouragement. (6) While incurable optimism is vital in the oil industry, it could be fatal on the bridge of a ship cruising through an ice field. Fatal optimism may have played a role in the sinking of the Titanic. It is possible there was a testosterone festival on the bridge of that ship, trying to get it across the Atlantic and into New York ahead of schedule. Slow down and turn on some searchlights.
A fourth obstacle is “shoot the messenger.” Politicians are afraid to deliver bad news. We are a merciless and demanding population unlikely to reelect bearers of bad news.
I propose that we exercise our citizenship by lobbying our Federal and state governments to aggressively pursue independence from fossil fuels, and to subsidize the implementation of alternative energy sources. This does not call for creating another bureaucracy. The United States Department of Energy already has the needed programs in place, but they need to be prioritized, orchestrated, and pursued more aggressively.
“… genuine energy crisis will be avoided only if preparations are made well in advance. Now, with prosperity high and petroleum politics quiet, is the ideal time to begin. Better to fix the roof while the sun is shining.” (7)
The Bush Administration has promised to restructure government agencies to increase efficiency (Yeah, like that happened… not.), but we need more than efficiency. We need effectiveness. Efficiency is “doing the job right.” Effectiveness is “doing the right job” in the first place. The DOE must be remolded into an agency capable of effectively administrating a program with a defined goal: freedom from dependence on fossil fuels. There are many promising technologies already in development; we simply need to pursue what is already being pursued, only much more aggressively. There is also talent being wasted on duplicated effort. There are different ways people can help. Those who don’t care, or simply don’t believe there’s a problem, can at least act in their own enlightened self-interest and fatten their wallets by curbing their personal consumption. The more interested citizen can become educated on the issue and vote intelligently when energy issues are on the ballot. Significant contributions start with active involvement like letter writing. Urge your representatives to make energy security a priority, and put our money where their mouths are. If you are motivated to pursue a more active course, you can join or help form a political action committee whose goal is public education and lobbying.
The projected fiscal year 2003 budget for the Department of Energy was 21.8 billion dollars. Only 1.9% of this was budgeted for renewable Energy Resources. (8) Our future energy supply is so vital to our way of life that the DOE budget should be rewritten to apply twenty percent, or 4.4 billion dollars, to renewable energy resources. Furthermore, we consume gasoline at a rate that would provide 2.7 billion dollars in annual funding for every two cents per gallon in tax. That’s gasoline alone and not including diesel, home heating fuel, LPG, or any other fossil fuel. (9) Come on; throw in your two cents worth. We could accomplish a great deal with an effectively applied annual budget of 7.1 billion dollars. “For perspective, the Apollo Moon Landing Program cost about 64 billion dollars (total) in today’s dollars.”(10)
Will our legacy be wisdom and judgment in action; or will our posterity curse us for our selfishness and lack of vision? Like the musicians in the dance band on the Titanic, we go about our daily business while trusting our ship. We believe we are safe, and have “someday” dreams. But those at the helm might be gambling our lives against the odds of running into an iceberg. We stand at a crossroads where the decisions we make will determine whether our descendants and we will live lives of poverty or promise.
This needs to be a community effort. Certain needs, because of their peculiar mixture of high development costs, their integration as parts of complex systems, and their impact on society at large, are particularly vulnerable to inefficiencies when attempted by a competitive free market economy.(11) Alternative energy supply is a primary example of just such a need. Less government interference in commerce is better than more interference, if our goal is maximum power and wealth for only the most driven and aggressive individuals in our culture. Pure, uncompromising laissez faire capitalism – allowed to operate totally free of government restraints – inevitably betrays the shortcomings of human nature.
(12)
The competitive nature of our economy handicaps us when there are long-range goals to pursue. Today’s commerce is dependent on today’s bottom line. Planning goes only as far as calculable profits. Left strictly to the forces of a free market, the development and implementation of alternative energy strategies may not happen in time to avoid disaster. With or without government involvement the coming energy crisis will be solved, but at what cost? A worst-case scenario: prices rise too rapidly before alternative energy technologies have reached sufficient levels of development, and our then crippled economy cannot finance the implementation of those alternatives that are sufficiently developed. Our economic house-of-cards then flutters to the ground around us, and the wheels of commerce come grinding to a screeching halt as fuel tanks run empty and bearings dry out.
Modern agribusiness is particularly dependent on petroleum. Ignore energy issues long enough and our ability to feed ourselves at current population levels will be in jeopardy. The sooner we engage in an effective program to free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels the greater the amount of time over which we can spread the cost. The sooner we employ significant amounts of alternative energy the further we stretch existing fossil fuel supplies. Also – since nearly all alternatives are cleaner than fossil fuels – the sooner we use more of them the sooner our energy practices will be less polluting.
Everything we do – farming, manufacturing, building, playing, transporting – requires the consumption of energy. When a need is as crucial as energy supply, it is foolish not to take action sooner, rather than later. We currently live in an economic house built on a foundation of fossil fuels. The foundation is crumbling; we need to jack up the house and build a new foundation.
This wouldn’t be the first time this nation has taken on a large and ambitious undertaking. There were transcontinental and regional railroads in the latter half of the nineteenth century that were funded by land grants and bond issuance.(13) Massive dams, rural electrification, and numerous other publicly funded projects of the Roosevelt Era pulled our nation out of depression. During my own youth this nation – all at the same time – built an interstate highway system, fought a war in Vietnam, landed men on the Moon, and funded an exponential growth in entitlement programs. In spite of all the palaver about cost and philosophy we’re still doing better than ever. We’re still reasonably free. There seems to be plenty of opportunity for anybody willing to put down his or her beer and turn off the television.
Sure we have some problems; sometimes problems help us focus our efforts. Regardless of government inefficiencies, the solving of some problems is too vital to our common welfare to leave in the hands of free enterprise alone. Free enterprise is only part of our American way of life. Another part of our American way of life is combining our efforts under the management of government authority to solve problems too important to leave ungoverned. Whether sooner, or later, the transition away from fossil fuels will become absolutely necessary. We have the opportunity to focus and organize our efforts early enough to make the changeover in a manner least disruptive to our economy. We also have the opportunity to establish leadership in technologies that will be most vital to the general welfare of the human family in the coming decades.
I’ll close with a little arithmetic for those of you who believe there is plenty of time to let someone else worry about energy supply. The people whose lives will be affected by our decisions are not some hazy, far-distance strangers who don’t matter to you. Considering advances in medical technology, and increasingly knowledgeable health and nutrition practices, it should not be surprising to see an increasing number of people mentally and physically healthy into their nineties. If you are now around thirty years of age or less, you could – before you die – know and love a child who will still be alive more than 150 years from today. The energy security and economic welfare of that child is in our hands. Become informed. Write your representatives. Vote wisely.
(1) Harry Chapin, “Danceband on the Titanic.” Compiled 1988. The Gold Medal Collection. Compact disc. Elektra/Asylum Records. 1988.
(2) Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) 1. Subsequent references to this book cited as: Hubbert’s Peak.
(3) Gregg Easterbrook, The Coming Oil Crisis – Really. Department of Energy, Office of Transportation Technologies. Online. Accessed 11/12/02. Subsequent references to this article cited as: Oil Crisis – Really.
(4) RMS Titanic – The History of the RMS Titanic – The Night of the Disaster. Online. Accessed 12/4/02.
(8) FY 2003 Budget Request to Congress. Renewable Energy Resources. Budget Summary Table. Online. Accessed 11/20/02.
(9) Finished Motor Gasoline Supply and Disposition, 1973 – Present. Online. Accessed 11/17/02.
(10) We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants: Lunar Industrialization and the Saturn VI. Online. Accessed 11/23/03.
(11) K. William Kapp, The Social Costs of Private Enterprise. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950) 197+
(12) Marjorie Kelly, The Divine Right of Capital. (San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, 2001) 69+ (13) Lloyd J. Mercer, Railroads and Land Grant Policy: A Study in Government Intervention. (New York: Academic Press, 1982) 3+.
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