Review our genuine need for oil

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Hans Noeldner of Oregon offers this commentary:

With oil prices soaring and eventual depletion looming, it is essential to review our genuine needs for oil. Because the following ten uses of petroleum are “non-negotiable”, it would be pointless - even rude - to suggest cutting them. So I won’t. Surely we can find reductions elsewhere; surely new technology will make all petroleum supply issues disappear. So after listing these non-negotiable uses, let’s not EVER mention them again. God forbid that anyone feel uncomfortable or guilty!

(1) We have an constitutional right to live wherever we please. If none of our day-to-day destinations are within walking distance, if roads to our home are unsafe or too lengthy for bicycling, if there isn’t any public transit nearby, this old world had better cough up all the fuel we need to drive. By the way, society owes us highways everywhere we go and parking lots everywhere we stop, too.

(2) We have a right to drive whatever size motor vehicle tickles our fancy. A farmer may need a twenty-foot, six-thousand pound pickup truck to haul fifty bags of wheat seed. A suburbanite may need a truck of the same size to get cigarettes and beer. Both needs are equally valid.

(3) Our lawns have become much larger, and we need riding lawn tractors to keep up. Smaller lawns and human-powered mowers are out of the question. Nor can our bored adolescents burn excess energy doing useful physical work.

(4) Happiness is an inalienable right. Because internal-combustion engines have become essential for human amusement, we must play on snowmobiles, motorboats, ATVs, jet skis, motorcycles, and other fuel-burning toys.

(5) We work hard, so we’re entitled to great vacations – and all the jet fuel it takes to fly to the Bahamas, Las Vegas, Vail, New Zealand…

(6) After we retire, we deserve to see America in comfort and style. If that means driving a twenty-five foot motor home thirty thousand miles at seven miles per gallon, by golly we’ve earned it.

(7) Our children must be driven to school, soccer practice, friends’ houses, and the mall. They are entitled to the best – including four-thousand pounds of body armor while in transit.

(8) Our driving-age children must own a car so they can drive to their job after school to earn money to pay for their car. They also have a right to drive to extra-curricular activities, no matter how far we live from school - see (1).

(9) Young males – and numerous older ones – need abundant fuel to express their manhood with loud, powerful motorcycles, muscle cars, low-riders, and enormous pickup trucks. Without such vehicles some men would shrivel up and die, while others would revert to firearm-based displays of virility.

(10) We have a right to feel virtuous and “green” when we tank up with corn ethanol. So what if it takes petroleum-based diesel to power tractors, harvesters, and trucks; oil-based pesticides; natural-gas-based fertilizers; and coal to operate distillation plants? Besides, isn’t that sixty million acres of switchgrass on the horizon?

Hans Noeldner is a Trustee in the Village of Oregon, Wisconsin. The views herein do not necessarily represent those of the Oregon Village Board.