When the well runs dry

Every day the bucket a-go a well
One day the bottom a-go drop out
-Bob Marley

On January 31st of this year, President George W. Bush offered a fairly shocking admission - at least for him. The Cheerleader in Chief of Big Oil made the statement, which probably surprised even his toughest critics, during his most resent State of the Union address. It was but a single sentence, containing information that was already well known by most everyone with a pulse and an I.Q. in triple digits. And yet, it contained a level of honesty which, until that time, had rarely been heard within any State of the Union address in recent memory.

To be accurate, this single sentence was almost certainly uttered to further prepare the country for the ongoing agenda of Manifest Destiny, Bush style, and to try and quell some of the millions of detractors of the situation in Iraq. Still, it struck a chord with liberals nationwide. Many of those farthest to left - the Greens, the Socialists, Nader Nation - had been saying the same thing for years. To hear it out of Bush's mouth was nothing less that flooring:

"And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world."

Well, you don't say, Geo.

Bush then went on to describe how the USA might go about solving this problem. Are we going to invade Saudi Arabia and make it a US colony? Nope. More crazy leftist talk. "Cleaner, cheaper and more reliable alternative energy sources … 22-percent increase in clean-energy research … zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies and clean, safe nuclear energy."

Okay, so not all of his proposals were exactly from the camp of Noam Chomsky. And some of these "new technologies" have been around for some time now, and are hardly different or better than those in existence today. Any realistic hydrogen car would likely powered by decomposition from either coal or our old friend petroleum. You guessed it - the good ol' pollutin' boys still make all the money. Using solar or wind to power an automobile? Not anytime soon.

So what is realistic about alternative energy sources? Not much, unfortunately. The problem is not that the technologies don't exist or could be used effectively. They certainly could, if things in America were a little different. The problem is exactly what Bush said: we are addicted to oil, and we're far too hooked to go cold turkey.

Like any well-entrenched addiction, the problem long ago moved from insatiable desire to absolute need. After WWII, the automobile industry was plump with war profits and they didn't want to experience a drop-off, simply because that annoying little condition known as peace had reared its ugly head. It was clear that modest wars like Korea weren't going to keep everyone fat and happy. So, they did what any industry does when they want something; they launched a massive lobbying effort and twisted every arm in congress they could grab.

The result was the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which commenced the building of the nation's Interstate Highway system, and the United States has been hitting the auto-centric crack pipe ever since. The beginning of the end of the walking community had begun, though few people realized it at the time. After all, this was 1950's America; Main Street, Norman Rockwell, Ozzie and Harriet. We were at our peak as a civilization and everything seemed right with the world.

But there is another peak that the general population could not even begin to contemplate until relatively recently; the idea of peak oil production. And if you already are familiar with this concept (there are dozens of books and blogs on the subject), you are either in denial or scared shitless of its impending consequences. If you are not, allow me to introduce you to a most frightening glimpse of future reality.

Many people view the world's oil supply in simple, finite terms; there is X amount of oil, and it will last for X amount of years. While fundamentally accurate, this doesn't reflect the difficulty of extracting the oil and its associated costs. The oil that we've been siphoning out for the earth for the last 100 years has been the "easy" oil - high quality stuff, sitting comparatively near the surface, easy to bring forth and sell. The more we use it, the further away the oil gets, and its quality degrades. This means that it costs more to extract and refine, and those costs have nowhere to go but to be passed on to the consumer.

Think of it like a jar of mayonnaise.

When you first twist open a vat of Hellmann's from your area Sam's Club, the tasty concoction of eggs, oil and spices is brimming with fatty goodness, ready for you to spread on your ham sandwiches. A simple swipe with a butter knife yields a bountiful dollop with ease. But as you make more sandwiches and fill your Tupperware with tuna salad, the mayonnaise level begins to drop. You need to stick your whole hand in the jar now, and mayo gets on the lower part of your thumb. The edges of remaining product begin to harden and yellow. Then little chunks of tuna get in there and join a few errant streaks of mustard, making France's greatest export turn a bit nasty. Pretty soon, you've got to go out and plop down $3.99 for one of those mayo knives which hang in a row in the condiment aisle of your local supermarket, just to get at the remaining, impure content at the bottom of the jar.

Worldwide peak oil point arrived at around the year 2000; we are now on the downward slide and there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. Gas prices will never return to where they were for so many years, and while there may be the occasional fluctuations, they will continue to rise. Also, many of the products that we take for granted, such as all plastics (think about how many things that covers) are made from petroleum. Computers and associated technology are also made from petroleum-based substances. The list is too long to place here, and they will all cost more money in the near future.

What does that mean for you, Joe and Jane consumer? It really all depends on how - and where - you live, but it will be nearly impossible to remain unaffected. Why? Because every single thing that we do in American society is powered by oil! It's not just the gas you put in your car; it's the farm equipment that harvests the food. It's the trucks that carry the food to people. The military uses almost unthinkable amounts of oil.

Speaking of the military …

Many people have called the current war in Iraq "The War for Oil." Bush's supporters love to say over and over again that it not so - the quote I've heard a thousand times is "Iraq is better off without Saddam." Variations on that theme include "Saddam gassed the Kurds, and you want to leave him in power?" (Bush backers always bring up the Kurds, as if they were cousins) and "The Iraqi people have democracy now, isn't that what you would want for them?" Raise your hand if you believe that anyone in the Bush administration really cares about the unfortunate, oppressed Kurds in Iraq. It's laughable. Just stop and imagine Cheney talking to Rumsfeld about the potential war in Iraq.

"Oh Donald, we've just got to do something to help the poor Iraqis! I can't sleep at night, thinking of what that awful Saddam must be doing." Wipes tear from corner of eye.

Yeah right. Anyone who attempts the "We're helping the Iraqis" argument should be forced by law to get "ZERO CREDIBILITY" tattooed to their forehead. Because this war is, primarily, about getting more access to more oil, which is why Bush's declaration of being "addicted to oil" was so astounding. He was basically admitting that this is what the war is all about - most of us already knew that, but hearing it from the horse's mouth was quite a leap.

The folks within the Bush administration already knew about the Peak oil phenomenon, being oilmen themselves. The idea of peak oil was first theorized, curiously, during the same year of the highway act (1956) by a geologist named M. King Hubbert, who was employed by Shell Oil at the time. He observed that when an individual oil well reached the halfway point of its total capacity (i.e. its peak), the oil became harder and more expensive to extract. It didn't take much of a jump in realization to see what would happen as the world became more and more dependant on oil, and each well went through the same bell curve. This theory was well known within the oil industry, and has shaped many foreign policy decisions and relationships in the past fifty years. The current war in Iraq is the just latest, but probably the most devastating. Estimates of Iraqi dead are in the hundreds of thousands, and American dead stand at 2,689 at the time of this writing. Approximately 20,000 US soldiers have been wounded, coming back to their families with missing limbs and shaken psyches. At our current rate, resource wars will become the norm rather than the exception.

All this in the name of suburban living, American style.

See, if you live in suburbia and commute fairly long distances to your place of employment, then you are, at once, both responsible for the impending oil crisis and most likely to be affected by it. For it is in suburbia that the oil addiction is at its most prevalent.

We've all driven down a state highway that doubles as the main road through many a sprawling town, and witnessed people walking along the side of the shoulder. We automatically presuppose that there must be something wrong with them, because "those idiots are walking down a flippin' highway!" But really, their only crime is not owning a motor vehicle. They simply live in the surrounding area and are trying to walk from their homes to a place of business. But their town was not planned with pedestrians in mind. It assumes that everyone has a car, and when they walk from one place to the other, they naturally seem out of place, like gypsies on a nomadic trek to the 7-11.

Try crossing the street in such a place. The nearest traffic light is a few hundred yards away and there's no sidewalk to be seen. You probably have to traverse a weed-infested drainage ditch or two just to make it to the other side, if you happen to survive the high-stakes game of Frogger while getting there.

Take a look at any strip mall in America. The planning of about 90 percent of them obviously ignored the slightest idea of a person on foot. We've become a country of ugly, corporate concrete jungles, auto-centric in the extreme, and we are about to pay for it dearly. Many people may scoff at this notion, but inevitability has a way of swiftly silencing those who remained flippant in the face of disaster.

Next time you are in a suburban setting on a major road, stop and take a look at the cars that go by. Pickup trucks, mini vans, SUVs all roll by with their lone occupant, the idea of carpooling abhorrent. Perhaps they are traveling 90 miles to their job; maybe they're just going to get a loaf of bread. In any case, people will simply not be able to afford that type of lifestyle in the not too distant future. They will be rendered impotent when a barrel of oil costs $200, which will only increase as the oil supply gets further and further away from the peak. And the population continues to increase, the problem will only exacerbate.

Not only will the suburbanites be unable to afford their addiction any longer, but they will be forced into an altogether opposite manner of living, which most of them likely will not be able to tolerate; hippy-drippy, co-operative sustenance farming. Yup, that's where we're headed, unless a truly practical and efficient energy source is magically invented in the near future. Without the ability to pay for the tractors to plow the land and trucks to ship the food, survival of the population at large will depend on localized, sustainable farming. The military will hoard the remaining petroleum and the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves.

Think of it; one-time pro-Bush zealots, once brainwashed into the "with us or against us" mentality, begging the current consul of the local autonomous agriculture collective for a carrot.

Think it can't happen in your lifetime? Think again. See you on the farm in twenty years.

Evan Redmon is a manager of a public golf course in Washington, D.C. and writes a few things about stuff sometimes. Contact him at evanredmon@yahoo.com if you really want.