Petroleum Musings

I've been thinking about colleges for months now, but only very recently has the possibility of a massive slump in the airline industry been a potential factor in my decision-making process. During my brother's whole four years as an undergraduate, flights, though not effortlessly affordable for everyone, were certainly available. Now some people are predicting a 20% drop in flights (I don't know with how much authority). If the situation is indeed that dire for the airlines--if gas prices really sink them--then attending a college 2,000 miles away is suddenly not just daunting on the emotional level of being far from home, but also daunting to the pocket book, and perhaps as a logistical difficulty too.

There is a book that came out some years back, which as far as I know is still popular today, called Who Moved my Cheese? that many business distributed to their employees as a kind of inspirational manual. I've never read the book, and it seems a bit of a childish story to market to adults, but I know that its main thrust is that trusting blindly in the eternal presence of a particular resource without planning for its eventual exhaustion is foolhardy. Two people find a big stockpile of a cheese somewhere and use it as a food source, but one is prescient and the other is not. The prescient one explores further and finds other sources of cheese, but the thickheaded one keeps on eating without any exploration until, lo and behold, all the cheese is gone. And so he asks where it went, not even comprehending that some day he would eat it all.

We seem to be reaching that point. We aren't running out of petroleum products yet, though many sources have been deemed inaccessible, and oil companies barred from tapping into them (offshore reserves, Alaska, etc.). But for the first time in my living memory, and for the first time since the late 70s, we're facing a belt-tightening oil dearth where skyrocketing prices have left SUV sales in the dust and attracted everyone to hybrid cars. Civilizations sprang up and survived without petroleum for millennia, so it's not as if people can't do with out it. It's not like the dearth of food in Ethiopia. Our society, however, is one built on petroleum. Modern western society is built on petroleum. Cars, ships, airplanes, stoves, lawnmowers, bulldozers, semi-trucks, and factories all depend on it. In the adjustments that we will have to make over the next few years--for we will have to adjust to some extent, whether the effects of this are mild or catastrophic--I see a lesson in caution, reticence, and stewardship. It is a lesson I fear will be forgotten as soon as the situation stabilizes. But the truth is that wise men husband their resources while there is an abundance, not while there's scarcity. The man who frantically scrabbles around for coin when his creditors come knocking is the foolish one, but likely enough he was laughing at the man who carefully husbanded his money when there seemed to be no fear of want.

Dorothy Sayers predicted in one of her essays on work that the "whirligig of production" couldn't go on spinning forever. One of the unfortunate aspects of our society is the seemingly insatiable drive to keep on producing, and consuming, more and more. It is ironic, though not terribly surprising, to see people blessed with so much prosperity lumbering around in indolent obesity while 10,000 miles away 120,000 Ethiopian children have a month to live. The whirligig has overheated a bit, and people are waking up, looking around, and adjusting the speed to compensate. I hope--I dearly hope--that the lesson will be learned that the produce of the earth is meant to be enjoyed, but not to be squandered. We can never assume that what we use will last forever.