Published: March 17, 2008 02:18 pm            

Column: Sponging out the oil tank

LEBANON, Ind. — The late Hunter S. Thompson, founder of gonzo journalism and his own worst critic, once said “when the going gets tough, the weird turn pro.” Or perhaps it was “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” There’s a lesson in either outlook.

Sometimes, the news is so depressing I am forced to enter sponge mode, then wring my brain out over a septic tank.

Thursday morning, I predicted that major media outlets would have more stories about ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s multiple encounters with high-priced hookers than about the Environmental Protection Agency’s new air quality guidelines.

A Google search of Eliot Spitzer — with no quotation marks — generated about 2,400,000 results in .12 of a second.

A search for EPA air quality standards found 264,000 references in .24 second.

Seldom have I been more disappointed to be proven right. Not that I am surprised.

The BBC reported Thursday that the price of gold had topped $1,000 an ounce for the first time in history. The CNN market ticker on my laptop has flickered between green and red so quickly it resembled a Christmas strobe.

If gasoline does not top $4 a gallon this summer, it will be because someone has sabotaged the pumps.

Parenthetically, if the United States wants to secure its major source of crude oil, it will not invade Saudi Arabia: It will invade Canada.

Before mobs armed with torches and pitchforks begin marching on gasoline stations — which would be counterproductive for a number of reasons — it would be helpful to learn who is benefiting from high-test gas prices.

It is not the gas station owners, according to CNNMoney.com reporter Steve Hargreaves: Gasoline is almost a loss-leader at stations that also sell food, beverages and the occasional trinket. The average station will keep between seven and 10 cents per gallon, gross — out of which comes the costs of operating the station. Even with customers pumping the product, the profit margin is carbon-molecule thin.

Supply and demand drives oil prices. The price of gasoline will not reverse until and unless the demand shrinks. Who makes that happen?

Us.

That includes the media, broadcast, print and Web, which has generally failed to aggressively report on environmental issues. We allowed ourselves to be distracted by sound bites and bytes; we let the politicians off the hook.

Citizens are to blame, for ignoring the warnings that were given. We saw this coming, but we were driving with our eyes closed.

When, in the 1980s, the oil boom went bust in Texas, a popular folk expression was, “Please God; give us another oil boom; we promise not to (bleep) it all away.”

Nobody said anything about flushing, however.

Persons who deny the danger of ignoring the nation’s need to replace a fossil-fuel-based economy right now with renewable power are delusional or terrified. Either way, they are not part of the solution. We’re facing a crisis. Options — real options, not just ways to pad the pockets of CEOs or the bottom lines of corporations — are needed.

We need renewable power now. We need alternative fuels now. We need a crash program that will make the Manhattan Project and the Apollo moon missions seem simple.

We need the will to unshackle ourselves from oil. The choices are obvious. The dangers are obvious. We may fail, but we cannot fail to try.



— Rod Rose writes for The Lebanon (Ind.) Reporter. He may be reached at rod.rose@reporter.net.

        

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