Reflections on the journey
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Pro Soil photo
Facing Up to End of ‘Easy Oil’ – an article from the stalwart Wall Street Journal no less. Of course, they anticipate new technologies to make more difficult deposits easier to get. The concept of a post-oil economy is not something they want to think about.
I was racing home last night on the freeway, wanting to get there as soon as possible so I could spend some extra time with my wife. The speed limit was 80, and I was doing it – one eye on the road and the other on my gas gauge. Reports tell me that a typical car getting 30 mpg at 55 mph drops to about 24 mpg at 75 mph.
Since I had some time on my hands, I started doing some math in my head…
Let’s assume that my gas mileage decreases by 27% when I’m driving 80 mph, and that my base highway gas mileage is 38 mpg. Gas currently costs $3.77 per gallon. So that four-mile stretch of freeway would use 0.10 gallons and cost 38 cents at 55 mph. Driving at 80 mph, the consumption increases to 0.14 gallons and costs 53 cents, an increase of 15 cents or 39%.
That might be worth it to spend some extra time with my wife. But how much time do I really save? At 55 mph, that 4-mile stretch takes 4.4 minutes. At 80 mph, the same stretch takes 3.0 minutes. Whoopie! I just saved a minute and a half!!
Let’s stretch that out to a longer distance. I can drive about 400 freeway miles on a 10.5 gallon tank of gas. At 55 mpg, that would take me 7.3 hours and cost $39.68. Ay 80 mph, that would take 5 hours and cost $54.36. That’s a cost of $14.68 for a gain of two hours and 15 minutes, or $6.38 per hour. And therein lies the rub: the cost of driving faster is less than minimum wage, so gasoline is still cheaper than my time. This makes it economically worthwhile to drive faster and get home quicker.
Tags: conservation, Reduce Reuse Recycle
The U.S. can drill all it wants but it’s hard to find anybody who expects greater domestic production to move gas prices by more than, say, two percentage points in the next six months. The problem is that the market for oil is global and U.S. supply is too small to make an impact.
So says Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, who examines what factors contribute to the rising price of oil. And he has really cool charts to illustrate it.
As I pointed out a couple of years ago, all the projected offshore oil reserves the U.S. has would support our oil habit for less than two years – if we got it all out of the seabed. Our appetite for oil is voracious, and our reserves are just not that big.
Calwest photo (via Flickr)
When Speaker Boehner (R-OH) commented that it might be time to reconsider repealing the multi-billion-dollar tax breaks given to oil companies, President Obama quickly agreed. But Boehner and his office responded with a series of anti free market comments that remind us that the GOP only favors free markets when they’re making money:
“You know, the No. 1 issue in my district and around the country is, ‘Where are the jobs?’ And I want to know what impact this is going to have on job creation here in America.”
Use government money to create jobs… which party is that again?
How would the repeals affect our economy, aside from helping to reduce the deficit by increasing tax revenue? Gas prices would rise. Sales of large automobiles and trucks would fall, while sales of small fuel-efficient cars would rise. Mass transit systems would get approved and built, and those already existing would get more ridership. Alternative energy would be competing with the actual cost of fossil fuels, not an artificially-low, subsidized price. They would instantly become more cost-effective, and would require less (and in many instances no) subsidies to become economically viable. Over time, the number of oil and gas jobs would decline, while the number of alternative energy jobs would increase.
It is also likely that as the price of oil rises, domestic production would be favored over imports.
Would higher gas prices hurt? Of course! But free markets are free markets – or else they aren’t. The price of food is on track to double this year, yet no Republican I know of wants to use government money to stabilize food prices.
More to the point, much like the budget deficit, we’ve kept our economy afloat by keeping energy prices artificially low, stimulating consumption, and picking up the cost on the national credit card. No one wants to admit they’ve run out of money. That requires admitting that there’s a problem, followed by painful restructuring. It’s easier to live in denial and keep using the card!
Perhaps the most important effect of repealing oil subsidies would be to continue our nation’s recent moves toward an economy that is not based on spending more than we earn – at all levels from consumer to central government. And for the health of our nation and our households, that would be a good thing.
Tags: corporatism
It has often been said that trends start in California and sweep the nation. We can hope that it’s not true of gas prices. I took the photo above yesterday on Manchester Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Tags: recession
The Wall Street Journal criticizes,
“Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process…”
That, in a nutshell, explains why we can’t kick fossil fuels: they create jobs. And no politician facing reelection can survive the claim that he or she cost Americans jobs. That’s especially true in a bad economy, but it remains true even in boom times. No one dares risk that Americans might be unemployed, because voters who perceive that the economy is worsening tend to vote against incumbents.
Relatively speaking, there aren’t that many people directly employed in fossil fuel production: the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the number at about 242,000 in extraction (coal mining and oil drilling and pumping) and another 60,000 in refining and pipeline operations. Out of 130 million American employees (and millions more small business owners), that’s just 2/10 of one percent.
But as BLS notes, these jobs tend to be concentrated in certain geograhpical areas.
“Three out of 4 jobs in the oil and gas extraction industry are located in Texas, California, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. Although there were almost 1,400 coal mining operations in 26 States in 2007, over two-thirds of all coal mines, and over half of all mine employees, were located in just three States—Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia…”
That means when fossil fuel workers lose their jobs, a handful of states suffer disproportionately. (It should be no surprise to anyone that some of these states are among the most conservative, since they have the most to lose if we switch to clean energy.)
Most people wouldn’t vote to put themselves out of a job. So you’ll never see West Virginia supporting a clean energy agenda.
No politician would vote to put him/herself out of a job, either, which is why, in the face of the job issue, even most self-proclaimed liberal legislators won’t support a clean energy agenda, either.
Tags: environment
“The transition to a no-growth economy (or one in which growth is defined in a fundamentally different way) is inevitable, but it will go much better if we plan for it rather than simply watching in dismay as institutions we have come to rely upon fail, and then try to improvise a survival strategy in their absence.”
I sit reading Richard Heinburg’s compelling article, “What if the Economy Doesn’t Recover?“ The article suggests that change is not only inevitable, but ultimately beneficial:
“Let’s be clear: I believe we are in for some very hard times. The transitional period on our way toward a post-growth, equilibrium economy will prove to be the most challenging time any of us has ever lived through. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we can survive this collective journey, and that if we make sound choices as families and communities, life can actually be better for us in the decades ahead than it was during the heady days of seemingly endless economic expansion.”
Outside my window, in my temporary office here at the Santa Monica Airport, sit two twin-engine private jets. I don’t know enough about aircraft to identify them, but I do know that a Gulfstream IV uses 5,000 pounds of fuel per hour for the first hour and 3,000 pounds per hour cruising. That works out to about 184 gallons per hundred miles for a 500 mile flight. Compare that with my Saturn SL1, which uses 2.6 gallons per hundred miles on the highway. A Toyota Prius can make the same journey on 2.1 gallons, a Hummer H2 would use 10 gallons. (The G-IV is rated for 14-19 passengers, but most of the private jets that take off here have one or two passengers, making them comparable to an automobile.)
Measuring the same modes of transportation by CO2 emissions, a G-IV would emit 3,882 pounds of CO2, while my Saturn would emit 51 pounds, a Prius 41 pounds, and an H2 196 pounds.
To me, private jets symbolize the propositions that our resources are unlimited, and our waste irrelevant– two propositions obviously flawed on their face. We cannot argue that oil is infinite– that is an absurdity. We can argue that we need not worry about running out in our lifetime, though the facts suggest otherwise. Likewise, we cannot argue that our trash is irerelevant– that leads to the absurdity of a planet filled with trash that has nowhere to go. We can argue that the trash we produce will have no effect during our lifetimes, but again, the facts suggest otherwise. And even if they didn’t, what about the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren?
Last week, I quoted a Wall Street Journal editorial that suggested this is the first generation of Americans who do not believe their children will have it better than they have. Yet we participate daily in a system that ensures this will be so.
Many will argue that there is nothing we can do, that we must try to convince our leaders to act because our own efforts can have no effect. That just isn’t so. In fact, our leaders are unlikely to act until forced to do so. Meanwhile, it’s up to us. And there’s plenty we can do, we just have to stop waiting for others and do it ourselves.
![BP MC252 Gulf Of Mexico by [ Mooi ].](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/4620962368_496cfb903b.jpg)
(Mooi photo.)
184 million gallons. That’s the amount of oil Deseret News says was spilled during the 85 days BP’s well gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. That’s 4.4 million barrels.
4.4 million barrels of oil is more oil than Iran produces in a day, and half of what the U.S. produces in a day.
It’s over 4,200 acre-feet of oil, which is enough to cover over 4,200 acres of land in oil one foot deep. That’s over 6.6 square miles– a foot deep.
It’s enough to drive my Saturn SL1 over 7 billion freeway miles. I could drive non-stop for almost a thousand years. (I’d be very old.)
It’s enough to meet the needs of the entire nation of Bangladesh for 49 days, Nicaragua for 153 days, Sweden for 12-1/2 days, or Cambodia for more than three years.
But 4.4 million barrels of oil would only satisfy the demand of the U.S. for about 5 hours and 7 minutes. Every day, we consume almost five times the amount of the BP Gulf spill.
Tags: environment
Tags: environment
As part of yesterday’s “Hands Across the Sand” anti-oil protest, folks in Salt Lake City chose the site of the recent Chevron oil spill to make their statement. Says Deseret News:
[M]ore than 100 people climbed the hill overlooking the pond at Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park to take a stand. A Chevron pipeline along Red Butte Creek cracked June 11, sending an estimated 20,000 gallons of crude oil gushing into the pond. Cleanup crews are still at work, filtering the darkened water.
But as one protester told the crowd,
“We can’t ask our political leaders to help us if we’re not willing to help ourselves.”
So long as we’re participating in the cheap oil economy, it’s hard to take seriously calls to change it. We continue to buy cheap oil at an astounding rate. Our energy use continues to rise. And oil companies will continue to meet that need so long as demand remains strong. So, what are we willing to do to change it?
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