“Big Oil” and the Environment

Hey Amanda, 

Basically my entire life has been shaped and financed by Big Oil,  directly. That’s not reall

y that surprising from a girl who was born in Houston. But it’s also true of anyone I’ve ever met no matter where they were born albeit much more indirectly.

Gasoline is amazing. Honestly. Gasoline is so energy dense there is very little on the Earth that can compare with it. People can fly across the country in a matter of hours thanks to gasoline. We can haul goods and food from the Midwest to the population centers of the entire world. I know everyone likes to complain about the price of gas, but I just filled up my tank at the same cost per unit as milk. Gasoline is ridiculously cheap. And it makes your standard of living ridiculously high.

diamond encrusted never looked so...industrial.
 (Photo Credit) 

Think about it. Deposits of crude oil were drilled into with million dollar drill bits through thousands of feet, sometimes miles, of rock. It was then removed and shipped to refineries, where it is separated into batches that will become thousands of products you rely on every day of your life: your toothbrush, your pantyhose, the sterile packaging around medical equipment, toys, gears, and yes, fuel. Each of these processes is invented and overseen by engineers and thousands of employees.  That fuel then travels around the earth, delivered to tank trucks, emptied into a giant cistern beneath your local 7-11 and then pumped into your car. And that gallon of gas, same price as milk.

I am an environmentalist though. And living in a place where the sky was literally brown with smog for a sizeable percentage of the year, where asthmatic children had to play inside, well… gasoline also has some drawbacks. But it’s definitely not “Big Oil” that’s the problem. It’s us. We demand, they supply. We shape how much fuel is consumed. There is nothing evil about supplying things that are wonderful in one quantity but harmful in another. No one says Big Ice Cream is to blame for the increase in Type II Diabetes.

The 25 year minister of OPEC, Ahmed Yamani  said something very profound, “The stone age did not end for lack of stones.” And our dependence on oil will not decrease out of a gasoline shortage. We must choose to innovate long before that, and we already are. I firmly believe that at some point in the near future solar power will be so efficient and battery storage so much more advanced, that it would be idiotic to burn coal to generate domestic electricity. I believe that gasoline will remain the major fuel source of cargo transport and long distance transportation, but that most personal vehicles will be plugged in rather than poured into in order to run. And I honestly do not understand why people think its foolish to think that way.

When Orville Wright flew for a grand total of 12 seconds, it would be logical to say that that technology would never scale. It could never travel long distances. It would never carry passengers. It would never be reliable for cargo. Well, solar panels are really expensive and they’re not very efficient. Battery banks are high maintenance, and solar panels wouldn’t  pay for their own installation in Washington state.  Logic says that it’s a bad bet as it stands. Logic also says that given investment and a few years humanity can do amazing, unbelievable things. The first computer was contained in multiple rooms, and I’m currently typing this post on a computer so slim it  falls in between my couch cushions and is much, much more powerful that ENIAC.  Before you mention Solyndra, I know. Amelia Earhart died crossing the Pacific Ocean in the first attempt to fly  across the Earth, and look:

Each yellow dot is one flight
(Unfortunately I don't know where this video came from, but I got the gif from Reddit)

Regardless of how bad global warming may or may not be, renewable energy is just the trajectory of the future. That's why I like it. Not because I'm pessimistic because I'm optimistic. Think about how cool the world would be where no matter where you lived the sky was never brown and coal mining never killed anyone ever again.  

Wouldn't that be awesome?

Steph, your hippy sister