Before we can curb our dependence on oil, we must first understand three insights that are central to the problem.
First, oil is everywhere. Everyone reading this will use oil - directly or indirectly - in the next day. If you travel beyond your neighborhood, you will almost certainly use oil, because our transportation infrastructure is utterly dependent on it. (There are almost no vehicles on the road today that move without oil.) If you stay at home, you will use goods that were shipped with the use of oil, as well as goods that were made with it.
As Daniel Yergin wrote in The Prize, his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the history of the oil industry: "Today we are so dependent on oil, and oil is so embedded in our daily doings, that we hardly stop to comprehend its pervasive significance."
Second, drivers have no substitutes for oil. Most goods in our economy have substitutes. If the orange crop fails and juice prices rise, for example, you can switch to milk, soda or water. But when it comes to oil, there are no widely available substitutes. If events in some distant land cause gasoline prices to rise, you have two choices - pay more or drive less.
We grew up with this lack of substitutes, as did our parents and grandparents. We consider it normal. But it is deeply abnormal. (What other essential commodities have no substitutes?) It damages our national security, natural world and pocketbooks. It is the most fundamental problem we face when it comes to oil.
Third, our political dialogue about oil is stuck in the 1970s, focusing on just one part of a larger problem. During the 1970s - an age before the Internet, personal computers or cell phones - the phrase "independence from foreign oil" became emblazoned in our national psyche. We started paying attention to the percentage of oil imported each year as a central measure of the success of our energy policy. We continued doing that, even as oil imports climbed from 34% in 1973 to 60% in this decade.
Today, oil imports are indeed a problem, adding to the trade deficit. But they are hardly the fundamental problem when it comes to oil. Even if imports dropped dramatically, we would still face serious national security threats from the world's dependence on oil. (We haven't imported a drop of oil from Iran in more than 25 years, but that fact doesn't prevent Iran from playing its oil card in negotiations over its nuclear program.) We'd still face serious environmental threats from heat-trapping gases. (Emissions from imported and domestic oil are the same.) We'd still face wild price swings. (In the summer of 2000, British truckers went on strike over rising oil prices. At the time, the United Kingdom was energy independent, exporting oil into world markets. That fact didn't protect British truckers from rising world prices.)
The fundamental problem with oil is that we have no substitutes. If every American could choose between oil, ethanol, biodiesel and electricity from the grid when fueling their cars, Saudi Arabia's influence would decline sharply. Emissions of heat-trapping gases would plummet. Drivers' exposure to swings in world oil markets would fall.
To become independent of foreign oil, we must become independent of oil. That doesn't mean no oil in our vehicles. It means giving drivers a choice between oil and other fuels. This conclusion is not radical. Experts across the political spectrum have been saying it, in different ways, for many years. But it has not permeated our political dialogue on the topic of oil.
Which leads to a fourth insight: Ending oil dependence will require presidential leadership. The changes required to end oil dependence are far-reaching. Lead times are long. Many current proposals are far too small. For the scope of change needed to solve this problem, Presidential leadership is essential.
What do you think the next president can do to end the United State's addiction to oil?
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For more information about David Sandalow and his book Freedom from Oil, please visitwww.freedomfromoilbook.com.
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Comments: 52
If all subsidies for the oil industry were ended, how would it affect the national energy picture, and how long would it take for results to show up?
What if subsidies for any part of the energy picture were ended, including those for alcohol, wind, and solar? What if there were something of an even playing field?
I ask this because I hear this discussed in abstract terms, but David Blume is the only expert I know of who addresses this question in detail. He is an exceedingly smart and entertaining guy, but he is presently a lone voice in the wilderness. His ideas will remain way under the radar unless other experts weigh in on them.
Don't all subsidies make the rich richer at the expense of less-advantaged people? Might the ending of all subsidies allow small-scale blossoming of experiments on a local level: waves here, geothermal there, solar somewhere else?
My primary interests are health and fitness. I am not qualified to answer my own questions, but I am curious about the answers.
Congratulations on your book and the good work you're doing on behalf of the planet.
You might consider it a quibble, but I disagree with how you have framed the issue around driving, not mobility. The automobile is not the only way to achieve mobility. If it were -- and public transportation were unavailable -- there would be an additional 580,000 carbon-spewing vehicles on the road every day in the Washington, DC metro region. It's not enough to give people a choice between oil and other fuels for driving. We must provide safe, convenient and affordable alternatives to driving altogether.
Those alternatives must also include walking and biking -- technologies that "move without oil." Some scoff at walking and biking as modes of transportation, but 40% of the trips we take are two miles or less -- well within the range of walking and biking -- and yet 75% of those short trips are taken by car. If we substitute walking and biking for some of those short car trips, we will, in fact, be substituting human energy for oil. And by displacing the gasoline in our cars with calories in our bodies, we will be simultaneously addressing global climate change and the obesity epidemic.
Burn Calories, Not Carbon!
Best,
Keith
You are absurd. Do you realize that most of those trips are made by single parents? Have you ever tried to schlepp a mile or two with 2.5 children in tow and carry the purse, the diaper bag, and the groceries? Try living in a rural town where your nearest grocery store is 15 miles away, the time it would take you to bike that distance would be anti productive.
We do need to be less dependent on oil, but we need other fuel burning options, not just for cars but mass transit (planes, buses, trains) as well. David is correct in saying that we need to end the dependence on oil, it would be the key to the upperhand in the middle east as well, when we can purchase what we want to purchase or not purchase at all, rather than what we NEED to purchase, we will definitely have bargaining power.
1. Easy access for new suppliers (especially small ones, like individual households);
2. Cost-based pricing (no collusion!);
3. Interconnecting electric grids with High Voltage Direct Current lines, to help areas with high demand benefit from oversupply elsewhere;
4. Net-metering; it is already available in 35 states, according to the DSIRE database;
5. Variable rates, preferably floating rates published on the Net. There should be at least 25% difference between rates for electricity at night and during the day. This will make it attractive for people to charge the batteries of their electric cars at night and feed electricity back into the grid during the day.
Given that utilities typically provide electricity on a monopoly basis, government supervision and regulation is appropriate, to avoid corruption and abusive practices such as collusion with specific suppliers to inflate prices and contracts that lock the electric grid into long-term relationships with a few suppliers. Where such unhealthy relationships exist, they should be invalidated on the basis of anti-trust and cartel legislation, as well as anti-racketeering (RICO) laws.
Government should end its support for polluters and should instead implement a Greenhouse Gas FeeBate policy, imposing fees on items that cause greenhouse gas emissions. Technology advances rapidly, especially in areas like solar panels, batteries and electric cars, but government should resist giving subsidies directly to specific suppliers and instead leave it up to market mechanisms to sort out what works best where. Perhaps wind energy works best in one area, while geothermal works better elsewhere. Government should merely ensure that, where rebates apply, technologies are safe and clean. Examples of a FeeBate policy are:
- A 10% fee on new gasoline cars, with proceeds used to fund rebates for electric cars;
- A 10% fee on fossil fuel, with proceeds used to fund rebates for renewable energy such as wind and solar power;
- A 10% fee on fertilizers, with rebates on sales of agrichar, which is produced by means of pyrolysis from various forms of biowaste;
The pyrolysis process could also produce hydrogen. Cheap hydrogen could further be produced from idle capacity in the electric grid and from oversupply at wind farms.
I also propose the following FeeBate: a fee of 10% on sales of meat, with rebates and vouchers for alternative food (my personal favorite: vegan-organic food served in restaurants in communities without roads)
This country does not have the inertia to overcome the special interests that have plenty of money flowing into the political swamp to keep things as they are. And if $3/gallon gas doesn't do it, I'm not sure any price will.
The problem is the system - the political system - which is awash in money. I suppose if the oil companies could see as lucrative a profit potential in ethanol - or hydrogen - or whatever the smokescreen du jour happens to be - then they might be seriously attracted to an alternate to oil, but then we'd just be paying $5/gallon for something else.
Unless the system changes, and from my seat that looks like never, we will not become independent of oil until it disappears, any more than we will be getting the quality of healthcare we deserve commensurate with its cost, nor will there be security in the workplace, and if you can think of any other national problems just put them in the same basket.
Sorry to be so negative, but I've been listening to this same song for decades...and the only thing that changes is the incredible volume of increasing monies poisoning the process....
We also need to reduce consumption, for a while at least, maybe longer. We may have to ration oil. Provide it for farms, emergency vehicles, mass transit, home heat. Very little for jet travel or ocean cruises. Sorry, rich folks. We're getting back to basics.
Susan what about choice. What about if I don't want to live with someone above me below me or right beside me? What about that I like to have with some tree's around my house? What if I don't want to see my neighbors house when I walk outside.
This sounds like living in the Soviet Union to me.
Well it sounds good but it may not be as good as it sounds.
If your grow your own food or buy locally grown food fine! but if you buy your food from a supermarket where the average product has traveled 2500 miles to get there you might not be reducing your carbon foot print as much as you think.
What we need to be doing right now is to be building nuclear power plants as fast as we can, nuclear power is the only reasonable energy replacement for fossil fuels.
Alternative energies will help a lot and someday in the future may be able to replace fossil fuels but right now their intermittency needs a reliable backup and the best choice is nuclear.
Right now coal is the primary fuel we use for electricity generation, coal can also be converted to a fuel suitable for use in vehicles we could be replacing coal fired electricity generation plants with nuclear power plants and save the coal for vehicle fuel.
It appears the in the near future bio-fuels developed from algae will be able to provide large quanties of vehicle fuels from very little space while helping to reduce C02 outputs from our traditional fossil fuel power plants by absorbing the C02 from flue gasses.
Net metering,
At this time there is no federal net metering standard, the individual states have set their own standards that range greatly.
We need a federal standard to start out at a 5% net metering standard with gradual increases yearly.
It doesn't make much sense to build another grid when we already have one in operation that can be tied into readily.
"Given that utilities typically provide electricity on a monopoly basis,"
Most utilities are regulated by State Public Utility Commissions, the rate's can be influenced by citizens contacting their local P.U.C's
I don't see that our society is so corrupt that we people can not influence much of these things locally.
David,
I agree, the oil companies have become some of the largest investor/developers of alternative energies, our utility here in Hawaii is developing alternatives to sell to its customers and they will resist allowing large numbers of people hooking their own solar systems to the grid because they make no money on the deal.
Taxes, No matter what they are called taxes imposed on fossil fuels will have a restricting effect on our society and actually slow our progress towards a cleaner environment.
The greatest toll of these taxes will be paid by the poor of our society, the studies show that the lower income in our society spend a greater portion of their income on getting to work, heating their homes, paying to put food on the table, all of these necessities will be effected by additional taxes imposed on fossil fuels.
Just my 2 cents
http://nuclearenergy.gather.com/
I am curious in your views regarding the January 2008 issue of Scientific American, specifically the article proposing the construction of a massive solar energy project in the Southwest USA, plus a direct current "backbone" to transmit the electricity to end users. The authors point out that it is theoretically possible to meet our electricity needs this way, AND our transportation needs, by replacing our gasoline fueled fleet with a fleet of plug-ins.
There is one problem to a President proposing such a project. That problem is that the american electorate is not well enough informed to accept it.
There are cities all over the world where owning a car is the exception rather than the rule. I'd love to be free of mine.
I'd also like to see it COST to drive some of those big pigs, Humvees and Excursions. If those drivers had to pay a sin tax in addition to their big gas bills, they might have other thoughts about their conspicuous consumption.
Simply making NEW cars to use NEW fuels doesn't work well either if one looks at the "big picture". Every new vehicle produced consumes massive amounts of energy during manufacturing. Before a new Prius ever hits the pavement, it has already consumed hundreds of gallons of oil and it will take YEARS to offset that. Think about that. Then there's the "cost" issue for consumers. I and most of the people I know DON'T own newer, more fuel-efficient cars. It's not because we hate the planet and are hell-bent on using as much oil as possible every time we hop in our car. NO. It's because we simply can't AFFORD a new car (not to mention the insurance that goes along with it).
HOWEVER: I wouldn't have a problem in the world with CONVERTING my vehicle(s) to run on alternative fuels. It's relatively simple and a WHOLE lot cheaper for me as an individual to do THAT, rather than buying a new car. Convert a gasoline engine to run on E85? SURE! No problem at all.....except for the fact that federal regulations currently in place make such a proposition ILLEGAL. Yank the big, old V-8 out of my car and swap in an old diesel that will be quite happy to run around on veggie oil? LET'S DO IT!! But, DANGIT! That's against the law too.
Ignoring all these harsh little details: what do you think HAPPENS to all those old cars people get rid of? Well, someone else BUYS them, for the most part. A few end up in wrecking yards (or automotive recycling centers, as I like to call them), and others are melted down to make OTHER things we need....like trains and busses and nuclear power plants. The upshot of this is, even IF a bunch of new cars come out that use all these new power sources, it'll be a long, long time before all the OLD cars are off the roads. Therefore, all the proposed benefits of these new vehicles will be negligible for quite some time.
We need different regulations that will allow private individuals to convert old cars to use new fuels without the possibility of being thrown in prison for it.
Electric cars? Might work, but where do you think that electricity in the wall COMES FROM? There aren't, and won't be for a while yet, enough wind farms and nuclear power plants to satisfy that need alone. Nevermind keeping the lights on in the house the car is parked next to. Batteries wear out and what happens to them THEN? L-a-n-d-f-i-l-l.
Electric motors only produce about 0.6bhp/pound of motor weight.....and that's only in short spurts. More like 0.4bhp/lb for extended periods. Weight is bad for efficiency. Always. We need more efficient, lighter electric motors.
Photovoltaic cells: with current technology, a solar cell will never produce any more energy during it's usefull life than it took to produce that cell in the first place. Net gain is zero. Funny how that balances out, eh? Until technology improves in this area, solar cells aren't the way.
Biofuels are a REAL possibility. The thing is, our gov't needs to realize that THERE'S MORE TO IT THAN CORN!! If we focus on just ONE fuel crop, WE WILL FAIL. Switchgrass, sugar beets, wood pulp, sugar cane/bamboo hybrids, canola, soy beans, sawdust....ALL of these are good candidates for making biofuels but all we hear about is CORN. Using corn as a fuel crop will only serve to drive up food costs and reduce food (and fuel) quality.
The gov't needs to take a step BACK and let consumers and private investors do what we KNOW needs to be done. Gov't is slowing everything down, not helping. Just about everyone who's commented here has an idea as to how to get away from oil, foreign or otherwise, and look what's getting DONE: nothing. WE KNOW what we need to do, but for a bunch of reasons that most of us don't fully understand, our gov't won't LET US DO IT. Now, why would that be? If it isn't "US", then it must be "THEM".
Ann does that include owners of classic cars many that have V8's ? You want to have the government punish people for having a choice? There are some who believe that the CAFE standards will cause more deaths due to smaller cars not being able to absorb the energy of a crash like a larger vehicle does. Is that okay as long as it saves some fuel?
We need a gasoline Pearl Harbor to get us off our butts. It will come. But unfortunately, it takes time to respond to this, and we are moving too slow. The USA in 1941 was able to mobilize for war pretty fully in a couple years. Replacing our vehicle fleet with plug in electric cars will take a couple decades.
Transportation planners (I post with in other forums) are aware of how many plans for tolling are likely to go through, and the reason is that the new versions have been quite successful.
What would the price of oil be in our country if you removed the subsidies? What would be the impact on our economy? How would the poor be able to drive to work, heat their homes and afford to put food on the tabel?
The biggest problem is in figuring out how to use it. Most people would not know how to if they had to. The second biggest is land use policies, in a word, sprawl. Transit cannot be cost effective where both people and destinations are low density. Further down but still significant are low-level infrastructure issues like bad or absent sidewalks, traffic signals without pedestrian crossing controls, and no bike racks at edge-of-subdivision bus stops.
The last of these would be low-hanging fruit, fixes that can be put in place fairly quickly and easily, the main difficulty being its needing to be addressed at a local level. The second is going to be unfathomably difficult to change, since powerful and deep-pocketed interests such as real estate investors, and the banking, automobile, and construction industries have such deep control at all levels of government. Higher fuel prices, whether from taxes, war or supply, are not going to make any difference.
Transit usability information, though, is where the most oil-dependency-freeing bang can be gotten for the investment buck -- that and a little marketing. Transit already is far cheaper to use than the care and feeding of the second (third, fourth) family automobile. Replacing a $5,000- to $10,000-a-year additional car with a roughly $1,000-a-year bus pass provides each family with all the financial incentive to shed at least one additional vehicle. Learning how to implement transit as a viable alternative, then, is the most viable task at hand, one that each of us can do, both personally, and by getting friends, neighbors and co-workers to do likewise.
Maybe we should look at the money trial lawyers make off of cases Some of these people are making millions off of clients. Here in MN one trial lawyer made over 500 million off of one case!
So Susan are you saying that because I don't want to live in a high rise I should have to pay more for fuel than those that live and ride trains?
I also own a classic car with a big V8 engine in it and I love that old car. I didn't buy it because it was a gas hog. I bought it because it was cheap, it worked, and I needed a car right THEN. 11mpg in town and 21mpg on the highway is the price I pay for having that car. It was either that, or lose my job for being unable to get there. Tough choice. Situations like THAT are what are going to make new, fuel efficient cars a non-option for many.
The new CAFE standards are a JOKE. Automakers have until 2020 to actually MEET those standards. If they chose to do so, they could wait until 2019 before doing ANYTHING AT ALL to meet them. Meanwhile, they're trying to dump these 25-30mpg cars off on us and we're supposed to feel GOOD about that? Hey....whatever helps you sleep at night. If these new cars are so good and "green", then why does a 2003 Dodge pickup with a V8 get about the same fuel economy as a 1963 Dodge pickup with the same size engine? We've got all this wonderful new technology in our vehicles but where are the benefits? My '79 Plymouth with a slant-6 got 27mpg hwy, cruising at 70+mph...and it could comfortably seat 5 adults. And I got 16-18mpg in town....and I was HARD on that car (Dominoes delivery driver). How many NEW cars that size get much better than that? My '79 VW Rabbit diesel got 52mpg hwy and the new VW diesel gets, what.....47mpg? Wow, that's odd. How come all this technology isn't adding up to substantially improved fuel economy numbers? Why is that? Anyone? Anyone?........Bueller?........Bueller?.....
And then there's this little company called APTERA. They're making a vehicle that get's an advertised 120mpg. 120! That's not completely accurate though, because under certain circumstances it gets something closer to 1,000mpg. Imagine that. Anyone who thinks I'm making this up, just do a quick web search for "Aptera", or go to aptera.com and see for yourself.
Kinda makes a 35mpg CAFE look a little pathetic, doesn't it?
Maybe smaller cars ARE less crash-worthy.....but then, I've never ONCE bought a car with the intent of crashing it. Maybe I'm missing something here about the way the REST of you drive, but MY goal is to NOT crash my car.
The same holds true for trial lawyers. There should be a dollar cap on the amount of money they can collect as well as the customary percentage for contingency cases. In other words they get the lesser of the two figures. Lawyers are like scabies, they are irritating as hell and amazingly hard to get rid of. I'm sure that there are some good, hard-working, honest lawyers out there. I'm sure there are.
That's OUR money they're spending... it's about time WE were consulted on how it's to be distributed.
Finally, you get what you vote for--liberal economics is defined by subsidies.
It's been around since the 1930s and it's right in the city. I've walked around in the place, and it's just plain *nice*. Right on a bus line. Twenty-minute ride from Downtown, or hike over to take one of the two Inclines.
You also mentioned crime. Not all cities are high-crime, and not all areas within one city's limits have the same amount of crime. Do your homework. There are some really desirable areas within some cities.
so now throw out the anecdotes about should we let the criminals do what ever they want ect. ect.
Your book sounds interesting, David. I hope that a lot of people read it and take it to heart.
But if you think it's going to be much different under a Democrat I think you'll be a bit disapointed.
Ahh They may act like they are going to do something but they won't, they are receiving large contributions from the oil companies too.
According to opensecrets.org the Dems received 51+ million dollars since 1990 from the oil companies. the Republicans received 156+ million from the oil companies.
However the oil company contributions are rated 9th in the list of biggest doners.
The largest doners were lawyers and law firms whos contributions were 232+ million to Republicans and 623+ million to the Dem's.
Seems to me it's not the oil companies we have to worry about. SHARK!
Brazil is second only to the US in ethanol production, sugar cane is the best plant for making ethanol.
Brazil's production is only slightly less than the US's and they even have surplus to export but that amount will just barely make a dent in the U.S's vehicle fuel demand.
There are limited areas in the US where sugar cane can be grown.
As oil prices continue to rise alternatives to fossil fuels for vehicles will become more feasible.
Bio-fuels from algae looks promising but the production of ethanol is very energy intensive, it is doubtful that by using it we pollute less.
The same can be said about most biofuels they may produce less pollutants per gallon but they also contain less energy per gallon when compared to gas which means more of it has to be burned to go the same distance.
Because transportation is so important to the health of our economy it is important that we develop alternatives to fossil fuels for our vehicles even if right now they are not economical.
In the future electric vehicles and fuel cell powered vehicles will replace the internal combustion engine powered vehicles.
Another reason to encourage the rapid development of biofuels is to reduce the amount of money we are sending to the OPEC nations who in turn send some of that money on to organizations who have vowed to kill us.
Are any of you aware why all of this is happening, why the oil prices are so high and how difficult it would be to change it?
Every bit of this "Oil shortage" talk is crap, there is none, shortage that is. The US and Canada have more oil in the ground and above than the whole Middle East combined. There is no shortage. Your/our government sold us out 30 some odd years ago.
Kissinger and Nixon started all of this crap with the Saudi's and Papa Bush, there has been an unwritten agreement between the countries ever since then. As long as we buy their oil, they will only sell it for AMERICAN DOLLARS, meaning our economy stays afloat, the oil companies make trillions, and the fat cat politicians become wealthy.
If we were to change that for what ever reason, be it alternative means or simply using our own oil that we have right here in this country, they would renig on the agreement, and what that would do to the economy over night would make the "Great Depression" look like a fuc**ing Mardi Gras celebration. It would plunge the country into chaos.
Until the American people realize that in order to change all of this we have to literally start from scratch, survive the collapse of our economy for 3-5 yrs, rebuild from the ground up the financial infrastructure, and start using our own indigenous resources, to include our middle class workers, to put this country back on track....Nothing is gonna change...We will just wallow in the shit that Washington continues to create...
We need to become the United States of America once again instead of the world's bitch....Trillions of dollars in trade deficit, trillions of dollars in debt to the Chinese, Japanese, and everyone else in the world isn't exactly conducive to a healthy country. We owe more than we have, and even though you can in the literal sense just "Print more" money, you can't keep it up forever....Our dollar isn't worth shit as it is, just printing more isn't gonna help....
Wake up America, replacing oil as a means of energy isn't the answer, replacing your politicians and the way they have been doing business for the last 100 yrs is!!!
We have our own and plenty of it (Oil)...You need to be working on a solution as to how to get to it, not another alternative way to line the pockets of the greedy.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977288589
At this point the scientists have warned us that we even if we stopped oil and CO2 generating activities right now the effects of climate changing gases in our atmosphere would continue for decades, and we are nowhere near stopping CO2 production. It is highly possible that we are set in irreversible motion to destroy most human and animal life on this planet, and that the standard of life for any remaining humans in the next hundred years will be severe and uncertain.
Human beings more than anything else as the first priority have to find a way to government themselves, and you are right, it means more than just in the United States. This problem had been addressed with game theory after WWII by America's greatest minds and the answer they came up with at the time was a war of domination by the US using nuclear weapons, so of course nothing was done. Sometimes when it comes to human minds and politics there can be no real answers and no real free will.