Killing Us Softly

We're pretty funny, I think.

About 100 years ago we unlocked this amazing energy source, oil. It's really efficient and because it's fairly primitive (just light it on fire), the technology can spread easily. It doesn't require advanced degrees or complex ways of seeing it. No. It's intuitive and fit our Victorian mindset (at the time) pretty well. Take this stuff, burn it. Oil is pre-science. We've tried to upgrade it to our modern world, but it's very last century.
Oil is liquid. All the other stuff we found (aside from oils derived from animals, which has to go through a process that isn't as direct and is far more constrained in its supply) wasn't as liquid. We had to dig for little coal rocks. Trees can be wiped out in a generation and take two to return the same energy production. Oil, well, oil can be dug and the inherent pressure alone allows us to pump it anywhere.
Basic economic theory holds that when there is vast abundance of anything, it gets used up wastefully. This hold true for oil as sure as it does human affection or fame. If you don't appreciate what you have, you'll loose it. Religion and philosophy have told us this for millena.
It took the earth millions of years to store up this energy. And while some call for the end of oil, who knows where we'll find more. But we do know that we've burnt a lot of it, most of it at some ungodly level of efficency. (My brand new water heater -- which runs on natural gas -- oil's cousin -- has an efficency level of 52%. That's like getting a paycheck for $1,000, then taking $480 and setting it ablaze.)
But energy is never created or destroyed, right? Correct. All that wasted energy did end up somewhere else. Some of it in the form of cash for those taking large profits on inefficently designed machines that use the energy (instead of paying people to make the machines more efficent). Some of it in our national GDP because our input energy costs were lower than our competitors, fueling economic growth. Most of it though is floating around us, in the form of pollution.
We have an amazingly inefficent and primitive economic system that places sole value on growth. There is no other measure. So because of this, our "lifestyle" is also about growth and consumption. Massive consumption. But we don't pay for it, at least not with a quantified cost. They are all hidden. In children's asthma and the melting ice caps. In the loss of species. And all the other things environmential types say we've destroyed.
And since most of the oil in the world is under the feet of those we don't really agree with, and since we think we can make fuel from food (like our bodies?), we seek to instituionalize those ideas and pass laws making that sort of production easy and cheap (at least to those doing it directly).
Our society reminds me of the laptop computer. Laptops are amazing, right? All this power in this little box. But its achilles heel is the battery. Another 100 year old technology powering this very 21st century concept. We have a pretty modern society, but its fuel is pre-science, pre-rationality, pre-post-modern. We might as well have real horses under the hoods of Porsches. Oil isn't that far removed.
So when we start using food to prop up an unsustainable system that BOUND TO FAIL, it isn't surprising that we start sending out massive ripples in our interconnected economy.
Luckily, mainstream media (at least the big newspapers) aren't idiots like those making policy. I just want to say THANK YOU New York Times. Not that anyone will listen, but you guys got it out there. And you got it right. Bless you.
One last thought. We erased blantant racism with the institutionalized version about 30 years ago. Hide it behind the "policies". For the past 10 years, when that form of racism started to be uncovered, we've moved it to economic racism. So yeah, feel guilty. It's your fault after all. And mine too.

Priced Out of the Market
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon1.html