Attacking Iraq : An Oil War

Attacking Iraq is all about oil. Published Nov. 14th, 2002 in the Johnstown Breeze, p4.

As more and more support manifests for a conflict with Iraq, I find myself wondering why we Americans don’t first fight the war that is in our backyards: the one on oil. Americans constitute one tenth of the world’s population, but use one fourth of the resources. Put another way, each American uses two and half times their share of energy and food.

I realize that numerical abstractions like this don’t paint much of a mental picture, so let me elaborate. What most of us don’t realize is how truly strange we Americans are. If we could see beyond those shining seas, we might realize that our way of life and our day to day extravagance is a hedonistic Beverly Hills compared to the rest of the world (yes, even right here in Johnstown). The third world is just around the corner, and most of us have never bothered to look. The majority of Earth’s citizens can not afford to eat meat everyday. Most humans do not have a different outfit for every day of the week. And the biggest reason that we Americans are the salient weirdoes of the planet is because our citizens own and ignorantly operate more automobiles than any other country anywhere. It the ravenous appetites of our petroleum hungry motors that makes us extremely vulnerable.

Before we dig up the Alaskan Wilderness or drop bombs on another Arab country, I ask loudly “why on God’s green Earth don’t we reduce our dependancy on oil?” Here someone is spurting blood from a gash in his arm, and instead of tying a tourniquet, we are trying to establish the cheaper purchase of blood transfusions. We don’t need to go to Iraq for an oil war: there are festering enemies right under our noses.

The most obvious offenders are the notorious SUV’s and other vehicles with inefficient fuel consumption. Johnstown has its fair share of them, and to the owners of them, all I can say is shame on you. They have their place, but in the majority of cases, smaller and more efficient cars would get the job done equally well. If the government really wants to protect our oil reserves, the production of these gas guzzlers should be drastically reduced. A further step would be to mandate that all new vehicles get at least 25 miles to the gallon. We cannot continue to shrug off suggestions like this as “something for those fruity Californians.” For every trip to work that you make in your Ford Excursion, someone could make the same trip 4 or 5 times in a Honda Civic.

The other danger to our oil supply is simply how much we use our cars. It is obvious that most of us who live in Johnstown do not work here, which means that we spend part of our days – and part of our oil reserve – commuting. This may not seem like an issue, but let me tell you that it is; the rest of the world does things differently. When I lived in Germany, driving to work was only a last resort. Usually, I rode my bicycle to class – about 6 miles away. The next option was taking the bus or hitching a ride – hitch-hiking is much more accepted there, for very practical reasons. When I lived in China, I only twice rode in personal automobiles; even for relatively well to do citizens, owning a car is unthinkable. Buses, trains, and bicycles enjoy prominent status in Europe and Asia, and the public transportation there is almost always on time.

In Johnstown, these options may not be practical, which brings me to another point. It is easier to ride a bicycle from Berlin to Paris than it is to cycle in most American cities; sidewalks and bike lanes are scarce and incomplete. Johnstown has several places where the sidewalk simply ends. Imagine if we went to war, and gas became so scarce as to be unaffordable. All of you in those fancy new homes in West Johnstown would have quite a long walk to buy groceries. Such an isolated city layout is simply not used anywhere else in the world, but in America you have to come to terms with the ridiculous notion that you need a car to get around.

As if our over consumption of oil wasn’t obvious enough, a driver’s license is required for everything from getting a credit card to checking out a library book; some jobs even require that you own a car. What’s more, we Americans pay less for our fuel than anyone else and we scream bloody murder when any politician thinks of raising the gas tax. Europe pays about 4 to 5 dollars per gallon, Japan even more.

After looking around at the rest of the world, I make my own suggestions as to what we can do to protect our supply of oil. First, drive less: carpool or bike to work. And think of how much more time you would have to yourself if you actually lived within walking distance of your workplace. Second, let’s get some buses going. Youngsters and adults could both benefit from having bus service to places like Greeley and Denver. This could be easily funded if we had the appropriate gas tax, and for the individual it would certainly be more affordable than maintaining and insuring a vehicle. As a community, we should also be conscious of a central city layout that favors walking instead of driving. And finally, if you still need your wheels, at least buy something reputable that gets good mileage and will last a long time. If the whole country implemented ideas like this, I don’t think it’s stretching things to say that our national oil consumption would be cut in half. All of this without firing a single shot.