Oil Anonymous, Part I

I own five cars. I say that not to boast, as in wow, look at me. I own five cars. Whoopie do. The total value of all five of my cars is less than that of any one car of many of my friends. It’s just that I am in that stage in life, four children who now drive, two in college, two in a high school 11 miles from my house with no bus service. Life. My point? Life is expensive.

I don’t make a living driving a car or truck but the cost of gasoline eats up more and more of my salary. It’s a drag. It makes life harder. I would like gas to be cheaper.

But it’s not going to be. And any politician, Republican or Democrat alike, who says so, who has some sort of little trick to tweak the price for a few weeks to make you think he’s on your side, well, he is pulling one over on you and selling out your future and your children’s future.

John Hammer was right on target today in his Under the Hammer article about the cost of gasoline. It’s not going to go down unless we use less of it; much less. And Thomas Friedman was right on target in his New York Times article today when he said that we won’t use less of it unless it IS more expensive.

They may not agree with each other in every way, but I agree with each of them as to their main points.

We are addicted to oil. We simply have to get un-addicted. This will be perhaps the biggest national security issue of the next few decades. Getting un-addicted to oil will mean making huge investments in alternative energy sources. It will mean making car and truck manufacturers build vehicles with seriously better mileage. It will mean (I think) getting serious again about nuclear power, now that the new generation nuclear plants are so much better and safer. It will mean reconsidering the fundamental way we think about communities, and that is, building and refitting communities to work without cars. It will mean serious investment in public transportation. It will mean a change of mind at every level.

But as long as gasoline is relatively cheap, none of that will happen. I would personally be for changing my own life patterns and supporting a higher gasoline tax if I knew that that tax money would go into funding research and development of alternative energy, and if I knew that the carmakers would be put in their place. Hummers? Dude, they just have to go.

In fact, there comes a point where we are in this together so much as a national security matter that what we drive and how we live and act does become each other’s business.

I love the Bob Dylan song Slow Train Coming. When he wrote it was about judgment, as in God’s judgment, but there is a kind of judgment day coming around the corner for us as a nation if we cannot gather the collective will to kick our addiction to oil. There is this line, so appropriate for today:

All that foreign oil controlling American soil,
Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed.
Sheiks walkin' around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings,
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris
And there's a slow, slow train comin' up around the bend.

It’s time we decided our own future and not leave in the hands of Iran or the Saudi’s or the Chinese. Let’s break the addiction. I for one say let’s increase the tax on gasoline, and if I have to walk to work, so be it.

It’s time we all went in for some serious Oil Anonymous meetings.