The Velcro Wall

Okay - now I’m annoyed.  I had a feeling I shouldn’t have bothered with Glenn Beck’s column (posted on cnn.com) today. But I did.  And now, I’m annoyed.

I don’t know that reading that particular article is necessary to follow my thread, but if you want to, you can find it here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/07/beck.energy/index.html

So everyone is in a snit about the “oil crisis” which I put into quotes because that’s not what it is.  What we have is a supply and demand situation that EVERYONE knew was coming.  Everyone has known it was coming for many many years.  Yes, we’ve ignored it.  But everyone knew it was coming.  So by that measure, I don’t think you can call it a “crisis.”  It comes under the same category as the boss guy who screwed off getting a presentation done for three weeks, finally finishes it the day before he needs to present it, then hands it off to his already overworked secretary at 5:30pm saying, “I need this re-done in our company format and 300 color copies.  But I need to leave here by 7am tomorrow, so can you have it on my desk so I can pick it up?  Great. Thanks.  If you need me I’ll be at Morton’s having dinner with my wife.”

That’s not a crisis; that’s bad planning.  And as all of us ex-secretaries know, “Poor planning on your part does NOT constitute a crisis on MY part.”

So okay - here we are, reliant on a fossil fuel that is becoming more scarce and which we buy a good bit of from countries whose politics, religions, and general social behaviors we don’t entirely agree with.

The newly popular answer is to drill for domestic oil in places that drilling is banned.  Now the thing is, that drilling has been banned in those places for what I consider to be really good reasons.  Mostly environmental.  It was banned at a time when cooler heads prevailed because it was determined that leaving those areas alone and NOT putting any sort of industrial stuff in there was a gosh darned good idea.

I suppose that once your wallet gets hit, though, what is and what is not a good idea tends to change, no?

See this is where I get irritated.  We spend (and have spent) a lot of time and money preaching to other countries about how great capitalism is. Look! If you don’t artificially control prices, the market takes care of it.  If manufacturers make cheap products, people will buy them, unless they’re of terrible quality, in which case people will buy something else.  The market fixes this stuff.

So now - oil is expensive.  Making gas expensive.  Welcome to capitalism.  See how cool it is?

But here’s the thing - it is cool because you know what’s going to happen now?

Companies that can, in order to retain good employees, are going to create and offer programs for telecommuting and for flex schedules and for compressed schedules, to allow their employees to spend less money on gas by spending less time in their cars.  This reduces the amount of gas used, as well as the amount of pollutants put into the air by our vehicles.

To accommodate the volume of new telecommuters, communications companies are going to invest in research and technology that will increase the speed and availablility of internet access. This will help get cheaper and better internet access into the very rural and low-income urban places that need it.

Car companies, because there is going to be a market, will begin spending more money on research and technology to develop actual, usable alternative-fuel cars.  There’s no point in paying people to develop these things if you know you’re not going to be able to sell them.  If you ARE going to be able to, then you bother.  

Energy companies, because again, there will be a market, will begin spending more money on research and techology to develop actual, usable, alternative energy-producing methods (wind, more efficient hydro-electric, solar).  

Supply/Demand - see how this works?

Look - I’m no economist for certain, and I’m definitely not all about letting the market run itself.  I have much more liberal views on the whole economy thing.  I grew up lower-middle income in the shiny, indulgent 80’s - I know what “letting the market work” can do to families.  And I feel for people who have to make the choice between gas in the car and meat on the table.

And short term, things are gonna suck for a while.  But putting a band-aid on the oil problem by drilling for a limited supply just isn’t the answer either - and I would bet that the negative effects that the drilling leaves behind would significantly outlives the 86 million barrels we MIGHT get out of the ground.

What you have to keep in mind is that there is “oil” and then there is “usable oil” - meaning that we’re not going to get every drop out of the ground. You only drill for oil as long as it is economically feasible to do so (there’s that economy thing again).  So when you say “86 million barrels” that’s how much there is - not how much we’d get.

But if you let the market and the society do what it always does, you will find that people are pretty damned resourceful as far as getting around a problem.  It’s what we’ve always done.  Necessity is the Mother of Invention. Well - if people can’t afford gas and can’t afford to heat their homes, I’d say that Mother Necessity is going to be a pretty busy woman for a while.

I’d be willing to bet that there are LOTS of people out there who have ideas - who have HAD good energy ideas over the last 30 years, but because there was no money in it, because it wasn’t economically feasible, they didn’t bother to pursue them.  And I’d be willing to bet that some of those ideas are going to start coming out of the closets and desk drawers and people are going to be taking another look.

The point I guess I’m trying to make is that I don’t want to see politicians or big industry get in the way by artificially pumping oil supply at us.  We’re going to run out of usable oil eventually - and before that happens, it’s going to become WAY expensive.  It’s just how it is.  Pretending that drilling in our own protected areas will change that is stupid.  And just delays the inevitable.

We’ll figure it out.  We always do.  Instead of opening up oil drilling, how about mandating that companies create telecommuting, flex-time, or compressed schedules for their employees?  Yes, I know companies talk a good game but anyone who’s actually WORKED for a company knows that the old-boy management types don’t like telecommuting. They like to see “cows in their fields.”  Mandate it, and things might change.

It doesn’t matter though.  Those things will happen anyhow.  And the beauty of it is, that once that door is open, you can’t close it again.  Once you’ve provided those sorts of options to employees, you can’t take them back.  It’s already started in some places.  Let it happen. See where it goes.  Please don’t try to “fix” the “oil crisis.”  Because I think if you look out ahead a little ways, you’ll find that it fixes itself.  Have some vision and some faith that we can work this out.