The issue of energy, energy dependence, and the economy has been on my mind for some time. As a research scientist interested in the investment by the public in high-risk, high-payoff basic science, the framing of the conversation about energy, its sources and uses, is of great concern. It is a conversation framed by industry and the government and colored like a paint-by-number by the media. At the heart of this discussion is oil.
The United States depends on fossil fuel to drive the engine of its economy. Greasy diesel in our cargo ships and big-rig trucks drive goods by every terrestrial thoroughfare, while jets burning their fuel criss-cross our contrail-laden skies. All grades of gasoline get us from home to work, work to store, store to restaurant, and restaurant to home. For many of us, this common trip takes us within 20 miles of our home. Power plants run on coal, oil, and natural gas (nuclear energy is far removed from the leadership position in this arena). All around us is petroleum – in plastics, in cleaners, in paint and construction material. There is a very thin black veil that separates us from the reality that our very modern existence is predicated on this natural resource.
If oil weren’t so ubiquitous, so obviously tied to every aspect of our lives, then it wouldn’t matter that it’s also a consumable that is perpetually shackled to politics. Something so near to the human existence is by definition the object of the human political system, a social construct designed to facilitate participation and maintain order. Participation and order are predicated on a reality driven behind the scenes by the ebb and flow of fossil fuel.
The President likes to say that the United States is addicted to oil. “Addiction” is a tricky word here. Addicition implies that before oil, we relied on other means for mass production of energy; that we obtained plastics and drove our SUVs on something cleaner, something more widespread and friendly. Addiction implies that there came a time when some shadowy character emerged from the alley, offered us a little taste of fossil fuel, and we were hooked. We abandoned our wife and kids, quit our jobs, and shacked up with a bunch of oil execs in a run-down two-story on the seedy side of town.
But that is not how it happened. Once we realized that we could burn fossil fuel to drive steam turbines and produce electricity, once we realized that our horseless carriages could guzzle this stuff that was often just bubbing up from the ground, we built our entire society on it. There was no prior alternative, no vegetables and water before this glut of fried food and pop. To claim that we’re addicted to oil is to claim that we should rid ourselves of our addition to air, or water.
That isn’t to say that I feel we cannot do without oil. I feel very strongly that here is a place where science offers us a choice. Science is a tool, a means by which we can pose questions, conduct experiments, collect data, and interpret the findings to inform future decisions. Science is a process, one which can be used to wager on the possible outcomes to maximize the benefit. Science tells us of the consequences of our actions, and as such is ideally suited for informing human policies surrounding energy and consumption.
What science teaches us is that every time we are challenged, every time a fundamental change is needed to make real progress, we have to be willing to throw ourselves at the hard questions. This process involves people, and often involves a big investment of capital with the understanding that not every solution will prove to be a good one (and thus money will be spent without a corresponding return of equal value). However, history teaches us that these investments were always worth it. How long Edison toiled with his workers to build a successful electric light. How long was the century or more that minds toiled to build an effective steam engine. How unexpected was the conception of nuclear energy, and how painful was its birth. How shocking was the arrival of Sputnik, and how bold was the resolve of great minds to hurtle a man not just into space, but into the arms of our moon.
No less than a Sputnik-like investment, no less than a Manhatten-style project, is now needed to find ways to replace oil in our lives. No less than a commitment to sacrifice is needed to begin the process, a willingness to stand up and put down the gas pump handle. No less than great leadership, willing to call for such sacrifice while also willing to make broad investments in a variety of technologies – some of which will surely succeed while some surely fail – is needed to build a better future.
Such an investment cannot come from industry. Industry is full of taint on this issue – energy companies, overflowing with profit, are married to the source of that harvest. Too long have such companies, with deep pockets and short attention spans, lingered in the oil fields picking at the black crop that bubbles from the earth. We cannot entrust private industry with this most precious of tasks. I am grateful that I now have the ability to skip past the BP-produced sponsor promos that air before NOVA episodes or “The Lehrer News Hour”, for their claims of investment in alternative energy sicken me. How little they spend in proportion not only to the profit they have available, but to the need of a broad investment in many risky technologies.
It is we the people, through our representative government, who must be willing to provide the leadership (by electing those with strong records and stronger intentions), be willing to make the sacrifice (biking or walking when possible, driving in responsible ways to conserve fuel, and investing in alternative engine technologies), and be willing to spend the money on many risky ventures in the hopes that enough payoff to reduce the need for fossil fuel.
It would be a start to send a strong message to the automobile industry in this nation. Their stagnant innovation has caused them to provide more luxury than utility, to attract customers to their products by robbing their own employees of benefits, such as a special program that lets them buy vehicles cheaper than the consumer (last year’s successful program of “employee discounts for everyone” was, if you think about it, another cheap way to keep their own employees from one more benefit). Henry Ford, a great American innovator, would shudder at the hypocrisy of the industry he created. Henry Ford’s dream that employers should function to the benefit of employees, that a living wage and good benefits were the key to a successful business, has been so abandoned by the auto industry that I am amazed that it still stands to this day. The icing on this cake is the newest gag: $1.99 gasoline for a year if you buy a new GM vehicle.
$1.99 gasoline is offensive to me a scientist and a citizen. Industry espouses free-market forces. They cry foul when regulators step in to keep prices on goods from flying out of control as competition wanes (witness the cable and telephone industry). The oil industry screams bloody murder when they’re dragged onto Capitol Hill and asked to answer for record prices and record profits, and they raise their right hand and swear on the free-market economy, on capitalism. Then they and their partners in the auto industry turn around and use a shameless private subsidy to buy the hearts and minds of the consumer. If the free market were allowed to reign, people would just adapt to gas prices or stop driving so much (or so poorly, when they do, driving too fast and wasting gas). Here is a prime example of why industry cannot be trusted: when regulation of the market messes up their bottom line, they beg for the free-market, but when consumers are ready to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles from foreign companies, or not buy them at all, they use a subsidy to lure you in.
Cheap gas will only prolong the unwillingness of this nation to take a risk on an economy where oil is a part, but not parcel, of the energy landscape. I call on all of you to consider these things before you spend a dime on a GM vehicle, before you drive 75 mph when the most efficient highway speed lies between 55-60 mph (you can get 20% more miles/gallon if you control acceleration and velocity, thanks to the velocity-squared dependence of air resistance), and before you elect another person willing more often than not to trample on basic research in energy or on environmental law.
