Slavery to Oil

Greetings!

Ok I know some of my discussions have been a little dark lately. Well, it might not get any better with this one. The future, if we continue our current path, looks bleak. I won't hide it from you. There are many problems in the world and they require serious, immediate attention. I am sure that the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean will expose some of those problems, but there are others, deeply rooted and hidden that are very close to the North American home. By solving certain problems in North America and Europe, we might alleviate or even completely abolish developing world issues. One of those problems is conflict over resources. The most contentious resource today is not the gold of the Spanish Main, nor the silks and spices of Cathay. It is oil. Something considered centuries ago a nuisance and an obstruction to agriculture is today coveted as if it were a sacred relic. Yet we then proceed to burn it at ever increasing levels, releasing harmful emissions that have already begun to effect the quality of the lives of all Humans. Something that so ensnares us, something we so rely upon, can only make one thing out of us: slaves.

Oil controls our will. What oil commands, we must obey, simply because we have develped such a massive, unnatural dependancy upon it. If oil were to run out tomorrow, the economy would collapse. Goods could no longer be moved, power would no longer be supplied, we could no longer produce a wide array of items, and of course, the suburbanites would not be able to get to work. We would have to rearrange our entire lives to live an existance without cheap, abundant, liquid energy. We would have to change agricultural methods, modes and means of production, the very products we consume. Naturally, when a resource becomes scarce, there will be conflicts, wars, and massive price inflations.

The truth is, oil is becoming scarce. It is running out. With Asian countries like China, India, and Indonesia jumping onto the development wagon, demand for oil will ever increase. As the popuation of the world grows, and demands more oil-dependant goods, the supply of oil will be rapidly depleted. Some day, oil will become extinct. It is a finite resource, one that can only diminish in time. Given the laws of supply and demand, the price will indefinately increase until it no longer becomes an affordable energy option. This will occur long before it runs out. The law of diminishing returns will take effect in two ways: 1, that the cost of extracting oil will soon outstrip the profits of extraction as wells become harder and harder to find and drill; and 2, the price of oil will be too high for it to be a useful, cost-efficient fuel.

Almost every action we take today has some dependancy on oil. On the surface, this may not be obvious. But, like the relation between worker and the value they add to materials from nature, oil is responsible for a great deal of hidden interaction with our world. Most importantly, a vast majority of our food is the product of growth and/or transportation assisted by oil. Very little of our food is produced locally (partly because subdivisions consume all arable land outside cities). Without oil, there would be no oranges from Florida, no lettuice from California, and no beef from Alberta. These items would be so difficult and expensive to transport, that the added cost of transportation would make purchasing these products unfeasable. Many of our edible goods are shipped by truck from all over the continent, and sometimes from outside it. Very few are produced locally, especially those found in today's supermarkets. This problem is particularly acute in cold climates, because come winter, no goods can be produced locally and supply is dependant on shipments from elsewhere. Further, many of our fertilizers and pesticides, upon which modern agriculture is so dependant, are based on petroleum.

I beleive I have mentioned at great length other products made from oil. Plastics, the miracle material of the 20th century, are derived from oil. How much of your household goods are composed, even in part, of plastic? We have become reliant on plastic bottles, ceran wrap, garbage bags, and electronics which are all largely made from plastic. See HISTORY LESSON IV, near the bottom for more detail.

Of course, many goods in general follow the same path as our food. It is produced in location A, stored in location B, shipped to location C, and arrives at your home (D). The total distance that that item travelled, multiplied by the milage of the shipping method divided by the total number of units shipped in that method will give you a good idea of exactly how much oil was required to move that item from A to D. Now follow this calculation for everything you buy, multiplied by the number of people buying things, and that will tell you how much oil goes into getting things from factories to markets. Nothing is produced locally. We are dependant on a huge network of world-wide shipping, which in turn is dependant on cheap, abundant fuel. If oil ran out tomorrow, that massive world-wide supply network would shut down because the added value of moving goods would inflate the price rediculously.

It is generally believed that the automobile has given the Human race increadible freedom. Alas, the automobile is the ultimate symbol of our slavery to oil. Every day, hundreds of millions of people all over the world hop into their cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs and drive everywhere. Walking has almost been forgotten. Our communities have beed designed and subjected to accomodate the automobile. It is now nearly impossible to travel anywhere without a vehicle, unless you live in the central core of a town and work/study in that area. Everything, from business to shopping, residences to schools, are designed to be widely spaced from other facilities. The very existance of today's streets, which offer so many barriers and vast distances to other forms of transportation, is to accomodate the auto. Foot travellers and cyclists are made to wait at intersections while cars pass by (this is particularly irritating when it's cold and you're a pedestrian). The automobile had a hand in the destruction of the city and the development of suburbia. Driving everywhere allowed the upper and middle class to live far from where they worked, and they chose to initiate their idea of order in the suburbs. Meanwhile cities were made into thoroughfares and parking lots to accomodate the 9-5 visit of suburbanites. Sidewalks and pedestrian footpaths were replaced by dangerous roads, while green spaces were eliminated for the sake of parking. The insensitive steamrolling of the car driver has fractured the communities of our world.

On an individual level, automobiles have made slaves of their owners. Aside from constantly feeding it gasoline at gas stations (which, of course, you have to drive to), the extortion of insurance, and the cost of purchasing a vehicle in the first place are contributing factors to the rising debt of the middle class. On the periphery, vehicles require constant repair and expensive replacement parts, fancy and practical accessories, and regular maintenance to keep running. Further, when it snows, tax dollars are spent to make roads usable for vehicles via the plough (which for roads is often on the scene way before those for sidewalks) AND many people have to shovel their driveways to get the car out in the first place. This is done in two ways: backbreaking manual labour, or the lazy solution, a snow blower. Here's a kicker: snowblowers require oil too! So do ploughs for that matter. So the next time you go out at 6 am to remove the snow from your driveway so you can drive to work, ask yourself if the automobile has really granted you freedom. Or rather, has it enslaved your labour and your wallet?

The grotesque cost of owning a car, from license fees to traffic violation tickets, will only increase. Let's try to make some estimates based on a young driver in Canadian dollars.

Buying a decent car: $22,000
Driving tests: $70 x3 (more if you fail, which is likely)
Insurance: $3000 a year
License renewal for 5 years: $75
Gas: $21-$25 a week x52 weeks
Repairs/maintenance: approx $250-500 a year
Accessories (snow scraper, snow blower, fluids, oils, tires, cleaning, parking): $150-$1000
Plus tax.

Total maximum cost from start to finish for a new driver for one year: approx $27970.60
Total maximum yearly cost: $5685.60
Total maximum yearly cost with tax (Ontario): $6538.44
(assuming a weekly gas cost of $22.80)

Hmmmm. What could $6538.44 a year buy you? Better yet, what could $27970.60 and $6538.44 a year buy you? Given the lifespan of today's cars (approx 8 years), that totalls approximately $73739.68 (and that doesn't account for rises in gas prices or insurance). Once the car kicks the bucket (for cars are build cheap these days, and the cost of repair is rediculous), you gotta dump another $22000. Some people spend twice this amount on a new car! Imagine a new SUV with all the fixin's, combined with it's maintenance, gas, and insurance prices. Perhaps there's something better we could be spending our money on. Oh wait, we NEED a car to get from point A to point B, because all those years we were driving we demanded that everything be so far apart!

Ok, thousands of dollars later we have the vehicle. Drive, park it somewhere, drive some more. Clean it, park it, fill it with gas. Is it a rewarding, self-fulfilling exercise? Does it grant or ensure any real liberty? By the way, while you were doing all that driving, you were contributing tonnes of greenhouse gasses to the environment, adding to ozone deficiency.

The great commute. Traffic jams, the idiot in front of you, even the occasional deadly crash. Mental stress and anguish, lateness, early risings. Is this freedom?

Ever notice that two of the world's biggest industries are cars and oil? There's a lot of money and jobs tied into these sectors. Without them, our economy would be very different. Yet the automobile is the ultimate exponent of oil's enslavement of the Human race. Through our own stupidity, it has transformed our way of living into one that is unsustainable, stressful, and entirely dependant.

Last year the government of Ontario announced that it will pay the Ford Motor Company $100 million to keep its plant in Sarnia. I believe Ontario now produces more vehicles than anywhere else in the world. But what could that $100 million of taxpayer money have been spent on otherwise?

-Paying off the province's debt, which Premier Mcguinty has lamented since taking office.

-The total payment of all student loans and debts in Ontario.

-Funding a healthcare system that is reportedly in very bad shape.

-Tax refunds for all.

-Improving underfunded public transit in all cities.

-Preparing for the Kyoto Protocol.

Nope, it goes to Ford's executives, almost like a bribe, to keep producing in Ontario. I don't think the 3900 auto worker jobs could ever generate $100 million in tax revenue.

So we spend absurd amounts on our vehicles. We depend on food and goods shipped from far away lands. We rely heavily on petrochemical products. Our tax dollars are spent on supporting and enforcing this matrix. Is this really freedom?

Where will you be when the oil runs out?

Think about it.