Uh Oh

The Chicago Tribune on Sunday published a remarkable special report, contained in its own section, titled “Twilight of the Oil Age: A tank of gas, a world of trouble” The 13-page-long series of stories, sidebars, photos and graphs is remarkable for two reasons: First because the Tribune correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Salopek, managed to actually trace the origins of oil that went into vehicle gas tanks at a Marathon gas station in South Elgin, a task the oil industry has for a long time said was impossible; and second because it is to the Indignant Citizen’s knowledge the most extensive and direct warning yet offered by a mainstream media outlet about the perils of the impending end of the cheap oil era.

James Howard Kunstler, the prolific and sometimes acidic urban critic whose “Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles” should be required reading every Monday, has been writing and speaking on this topic for years. Often he recounts stories of laying his heavy message on SUV-driving crowds where the reaction ranges from denial to derision. But as detailed as Kunstler’s arguments are, and have been for some time, he was always out there on his own, a wing nut from upstate New York spouting end-of-days gibberish about the death of suburbia.

Now comes the Chicago Tribune, a paper with its own problems to be sure, but a generally respected news outlet and one with a vast reach throughout the Midwest, and beyond. And believe this: When readers found this section on Sunday, despite its obvious length, many probably set it aside and also set aside the time to read it, or parts of it anyway, fully intending to eventually read all of it. This story comes at the perfect time. The Indignant Citizen saw gas being sold at stations along S. Pulaski Road going for upwards of $3.20 a gallon for regular, and over $3.50 a gallon for premium. People are paying a lot for gas and they’re pissed. They’re starting to look for someone to blame. One-third of the U.S. Senate and the entire House will no doubt feel some of that blame landing on them this fall, like pigeon shit underneath the el.

But before they go pulling the lever, or punching the button, or touching the screen for all the challengers out there in November, as a way to punish the incumbents, they should read this package carefully, and then take a close look at how they’re living their own lives, and how what they do every day is contributing to the problem.

Salopek and the Tribune pull no punches. There are blunt statements here, particularly blunt for a so-called objective newspaper. “This is, in effect, a journey into the heart of America’s vast and troubled oil dependency,” Salopek writes. “And what it exposes is a globe-spanning energy network that today is so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so clearly unsustainable, that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever.”

“Unsustainable.” When was the last time you read a word like that to describe, in essence, America’s entire culture; it’s lifestyle? But didn’t our vice president say the American way of life is not negotiable? Hmm. A statement like that doesn’t fit well with “unsustainable.” Well, if it’s unsustainable, then by definition it’s not negotiable. No negotiation necessary, the decision has already been made – by nature.

In a sidebar story on the theories behind so-called peak oil, or the idea that the world is rapidly approaching the point at which it will have recovered half or more of all the recoverable oil there is, Salopek offers some sobering statistics from a six-year-old study done by the U.S. Geological Survey. China, who many view as the United States’ main global competitor for oil in the coming decades (that theory assumes China’s economic growth continues unabated, which is debatable), has been using oil at a rapidly increasing rate. The original survey, completed before China’s big ramp-up in oil use, surmised that peak oil production would occur in 2037. The figure was mysteriously revised last year to 2044, even though China is using more oil now than it was when the original study came out.

“Even that assessment is jolting,” Salopek writes. “The fuel that powers our cars, our military, our technological way of life and our frenetic consumer culture likely will have to be replaced before today’s preschoolers turn 40.”

That’s going to be a bitch-slap to a lot of little kids out there, who will already be smarting from yearly lashes administered by the tax man. These monetary whippings will be required to pay down the massive amount of debt the youngest generation is being saddled with to fund a never-ending war—go ahead and call it a Crusade; the president did—and the neo-Colonialism required to police the growing and increasingly disenfranchised and volatile underclasses in the Middle East.

Salopek, perhaps unfairly, uses a nice upper-middle class family from St. Charles, the Binnings, as the clearest illustration of the cluelessness with which Americans are sleepwalking into the misery of the post-cheap oil era. Early in the article we meet Laura Binning, 37 and mother of three, driving her 10-mile-per-gallon Hummer H2. Like many of their neighbors, and like half of all Americans today, the Binnings think nothing of driving all over the suburban landscape for activities, food and entertainment. Their swimming pool heating bill was $2,000 in October 2005. They live on 2.7 acres that they do not farm, land that, once fertile, now sits fallow so they can enjoy the view. Are they concerned about the price of gas, about their energy bills? Sure. But only to a point.

“In the end, like most Americans, they were optimists,” writes Salopek of the Binnings. “They had little choice. Their livelihood—selling property in suburbia—rests primarily on a dubious supposition: the continuing abundance of cheap crude. Laura faces this reality every day. Shuttling the boys across the suburbs to piano lessons, floor hockey practice, Little League and hip-hop dance classes, she can rack up 40 miles or more in the Hummer.

“‘Are there problems coming? Maybe. But I prefer to think the glass is half full,’ said Tim [Binning, Laura’s husband and a real estate broker], 37, arriving home from his office one afternoon after a commute of 19 miles each way. ‘When shortages jack up oil prices permanently, someone will have the incentive to invent another fuel. That’s how the market works.’”

This belief that technology, or alternate fuels will magically step in and allow the easy motoring culture to continue unabated is a fantasy. It’s already been discussed here, and further discussion isn’t hard to find. The Tribune’s story includes a helpful chart of all the alternative fuels and the likelihood they’ll be able to pick up the slack. It’s informative.

Throw in the rising tide of anti-Americanism felt by people in places where the United States gets its oil, and the prospects for continuing this arrangement for the long term seem bleak, indeed.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at how Salopek’s article deals with that issue.