At the urging of one friend I’m going to take a little interlude from nagging people on sustainability principles and detour into my of my more common harangues. Not that this crowd needs it as much as most but sometimes some of our architects forget to really stress the energy efficiency aspects of their designs and the recent LEED hoo-haa has made some good points about this. So, let me try to recount a few things about why we ought to be doing some of this–and not using so much glass in a helter-skelter way. Here goes:
It’s the Oil, Stupid !
It’s a sign that ought to hang over the desk of every politician, general and journalist—and architect.
OIL has literally made us what we are today.
Without it, we would not have had the mechanization of agriculture. Before that a farmer could only support the food needs of about 5 others and most of those were his family. Most of us would have been farmers without oil.
Beginning just after WW I it allowed many to leave the farm to become doctors, lawyers, artists, factory workers and so many other professions. OK, so more lawyers may not have been one of the better benefits of oil.
It also meant the beginning of our consumerist society and a value system which often focuses on what we have rather than who we are. It took us from being inner-directed to other-directed
HISTORICALLY, let me give you a litany of events:
Oil. It has been a cause of conflict for decades.
In 1933 Smedley Butler said:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. .. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I helped make Mexico, .. safe for American oil interests in 1914…. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, Smedley was a Marine Corp Major General and the recipient of two Congressional medals of honor. He would have had a third but the rules at that time prevented it.
On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. A source close to the emperor noted they took this action largely because the US imposed a de facto petroleum embargo on them.
During WW II President Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud and basically laid a policy that we would protect the Saudi Kingdom in return for access to oil. Every US president has renewed that pledge to a nation so abusive of human rights it makes the #1 or #2 spot in that category every year from Amnesty International.
In 1952 the President’s Materials Policy Commission (the Paley Commission) warned that the nation’s oil supply would begin to dwindle by the 1970′s.
In 1953 the US CIA engineered the overthrow of Mohammed Mosidique and put the Shah of Iran in power to protect our access to oil
In 1956 M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil geologist, determined the US would peak in oil production between 1966 and 1970 by three impeccable proofs. It peaked in 1970.
In 1971 the first wave of US military flew arms to Iran. It was later to lead to the revolution. I delivered a jet to them and trained them.
In 1973 we had the Arab oil embargo and developed plans to invade if need be.
In the 1979 Iranian Mullahs together with the middle class, angry about arms spending, overthrew the Shah.
In 1991 we intervened in Iraq to maintain access to Kuwaiti oil
In 2001 the US was attacked by Jihhadist terorists. 15 of 19 were Saudi who saw us as “foreign guards” defiling the land of Mecca and Medina.
In 2003 we invaded Iraq. It’s not because they had rutabagas there–OR weapons of Mass Destruction but they had the second largest oil reserves at the time.
In 2006 George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address “America is addicted to oil”
SO, WHERE ARE WE TODAY?
4% of global population using 25% of oil use
We use 20.5 million barrels per day OR ~7.5 billion barrels a year. China uses about 1/3 as much.
We import roughly 55-60% of it
Surprisingly most does not currently come from the Middle East –maybe 20% of totals
BUT, neither can we drill ourselves to oil independence. You don’t end an addiction by continuing the drug. Let me try to explain:
The mean availability for both ANWR and Outer Continental Shelf combined is ~96 billion barrels, a mean figure
We use 7.5 billion barrels per year
That’s about 12.8 years if we could get it all out at once–and we can’t
It’s a global market and we do not set the price so drilling will not significantly lower its cost either.
When all is said, the Middle East will still have the easy, cheap oil after we exhaust domestic sources.
We will be back to them but even more dependent
Getting off oil is the only real solution and the transition must begin now.
Sad to say oil and the environmental issues will only be taken seriously when linked to national security–and both of them are. In his 1962 book Enough Good Men Dr. Albert E. Burke warned us:
The problem is not money. It is a problem of education to inform Americans about the close tie which has always existed between a wide margin of resources and freedom. Reduce that margin of resources, reduce the quality of those resources and you reduce what Americans have always meant by the word “freedom.”
