Just Get Me My Gas Jim Culleny With all that’s happening now, what’s the big gorilla in the room most of us are ignoring? We’re addicted to oil, that’s the big gorilla. The United States consumes a quarter of the world’s total oil production, but controls a mere 3 percent of known reserves. With an oil habit like this you don’t have to be Steven Hawkings to add the whole thing up. Why do you think we need such a strong military? Is it a coincidence that the most oil-rich region on the globe is exactly the most volitile, and the one that currently holds our interest to the point of war? I don’t think so. We’re not all that worked up about what’s happening with the HIV epidemic occuring at this very moment in African States. God knows the media doesn’t care, yet it’s at least as important ...unless you’re a junkie. If you’re a junkie, the all-encompassing obsession of any day is to get your fix. Anything else? Fuggeddabuodit. What’s happening right here takes a back seat to the war effort. Though the world rumble and tumble and crumble, just get me my gas. Our oil dependence endangers our national security. This is the point of a report of the National Resources Defense Council. How so? Here’s some more easy math: 65 percent of the world's known oil reserves lie beneath the Persian Gulf states. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would increase world reserves by less than 1/3 of 1 percent. Relatively speaking this equals zip. No matter how much we drill for new oil at home --even if we increased production from existing oil fields-- we’ll still be looking to Persian Gulf producers to top-off our tanks. We didn’t get where we are today by building economical, state-of-the-art, mass transportation systems. And fuzzying up the numbers can’t adjust the facts; it goes against nature. With this kind of nuerotic need, how can we conduct foreign policy in the best interests of the American people? War should not be an option for obtaining energy. I thought we were smarter than that. Isn’t this the country that gave us the man on the moon (from dead start to lunar touchdown in less then 10 years)? That, and a 226 year-old legacy of democracy, however imperfect? Our oil jones is really making us ugly and stupid. We’re dissing planetary issues as vital to our national security as the ones getting all the attention of our new Department of Homeland Security. How vital? Let me count the ways. 1. A globally out-of-control HIV virus will have a more devastating impact on us than ten middle-easts lousy with Saddam Husseins. We can’t just bomb a virus. 2. A planet warmed-up enough to lend Boston Commons a distinctly Bahama-like look will be as destructive to our well-being as a thousand murderous assaults by religious fanatics. Cruise missiles are nothing against deadly atmospheric conditions. 3. Continued widespread destruction of the counterpart of our lungs (namely the earth’s oxygen producing rain forests), will make it as impossible for us to breathe as any wave of gas attacks mounted by the Big Moustache. Yet facing all of this, we’re still blind as bats and prone to distraction. We should do something about this substance abuse problem of ours. We need help, and we need to help ourselves (but not in the currently popular, me-first sense of the term). We should all see a Character Mechanics asap, who would screw our heads on tighter and service our common sense. The first adjustment would be to completely mistrust anybody who stands to profit from our addiction. Never trust your dope dealer. If a guy’s got his fingers in oil he is not one to dictate policy decisions affecting planetary health and true national security. Of course this would eliminate most of the current government, but it’s a reasonable place to start. You don’t have to be a think-tank egg-head to figure this out; all you’ve got to do is sincerely examine your need for horsepower and where it’s driving you in the long run. There are about 6.2 billion people on the planet at this moment, according to the Census Bureau’s population clock. That‘s a lot of people just till now, and already the earth can’t keep up. Do the math: if you started counting one person a second right now, and counted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 12 months a year, nonstop --hopped up on Starbucks-- you’d be checking off the last hombre or mujer in the latter part of the 21st century. Something like 2190, the dawn of the Star Trek era. Except (it‘s always something), at the present rate of population growth there’d be so many more people standing around watching you finish up, there wouldn’t be a spare inch for anyone to pat you on the back. And if all of those people were driving SUVs... Well, you see the problem. We gotta get a handle on it. Why trust talking heads and politicians who have 10W - 30 running through their viens. Sober up. Get a grip.