As the personal tragedies and
economic ripples flowed from New Orleans last week, a friend called
from Eureka in Northern California to alert me that the price of
gasoline had risen another 30 cents per gallon. Maybe this is a
message that will get through, I thought.
I live near
Eureka in the tiny town of Petrolia, which was named for an 1860s
oil boom whose liquid bounty was shipped out by mule train.
Unfortunately, the wells soon ran dry. Our cars now run on fuel
from oilfields thousands of miles away, at prices that respond to
events from Biloxi and New Orleans to Baghdad.
That’s a paradox, in a rural valley where home-grown energy
is highly esteemed. At the private high school outside Petrolia,
where I used to teach, rooftop solar panels provided ample
electricity in spring and early fall. A hydro-electric system
– built in one of the classes – tapped into a seasonal
stream above the school. We piped the water down the hillside, shot
it at a waterwheel the size of a lawnmower tire, and kept our
lights on through the rainy coastal winters when sunshine was
scarce.
Local firewood warmed the classrooms and
dormitory cabins, and even heated our boarders’ showers. We
went to these lengths, even though we could have easily plugged
into the grid. It made visible what it took to supply the heat and
light that kept us comfortable. We identified what educators call a
teachable moment and seized it.
For all our efforts to
unplug from the web of pipelines and transmission wires that power
America, however, one aspect of our energy use was conventional:
Our school bus drank petroleum-based gas by the barrelful.
Our dependence on oil made us a microcosm of the American
economy. In the quarter-century since the 1979 oil shock, the U.S.
economy has weaned itself from petroleum in almost all areas except
transportation. As a result, the country has less breathing room to
cut back on oil when refineries flood and prices skyrocket.
At home, heating oil has given way to natural gas, better
insulation and double-paned windows. The story is even more
dramatic for electric utilities. In 1978, oil generated 17 percent
of the nation’s power. Today, that share is under 3 percent.
It’s transportation, plain and simple, that has
kept America addicted to oil. As we’ve found substitutes for
petroleum elsewhere, the share of U.S. oil consumption dedicated to
transportation has grown from half to more than two-thirds,
totaling 14 million barrels a day. Imagine a 5-gallon bucket of
crude delivered daily to each household in America: That’s
what it takes to keep us on the road.
Substitute fuels
such as biodiesel — made from vegetable oil — are a
nifty addition to the mix. But even if America’s entire
soybean crop were converted to biodiesel, it would supply less than
a quarter of a million barrels per day, under 2 percent of
America’s appetite for fill-ups. That’s a drop in the
bucket.
The answer is easy in concept but challenging in
practice: Use less fuel. U.S. policy has sought that goal by
demanding that each automaker achieve a minimum average fuel
economy for the entire fleet it produces. Those standards have
stagnated for 20 years.
If the government had continued
raising the standards in the 1980s, the results would already be
felt, as older autos were retired and new ones took their place.
The second-best time is now, as it becomes increasingly
obvious that building our lives around cheap, abundant petroleum is
a chancy proposition. As a country, we have arrived at a teachable
moment of our own.
It is painful to see the Bush
administration squandering this opportunity. Under its fuel economy
plan for SUVs and light trucks, marginally better gas-guzzlers
would begin rolling off the assembly lines in about five years.
Truly gargantuan SUVs would be exempt entirely. Others
wouldn’t even be expected to attain the same gas mileage that
comparable models are already achieving.
With 20
years’ hindsight, it’s clear that the previous
generation should have mandated more fuel-efficient cars and
trucks. We can’t turn back that clock, but we can learn a
lesson. If we don’t take steps today to improve the
efficiency of tomorrow’s auto fleet, the next generation will
wonder why even a Category 4 hurricane and its terrible aftermath
couldn’t kick us into gear.
Seth
Zuckerman is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He is an
environmental writer who lives in Petrolia,
California.
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