OPINION & EDITORIAL
Oil dependency must decrease
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Also by Charles Lim:
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- Despite failings, Bush right on water bill veto (November 14, 2007)
- Fake press raises disturbing questions (October 31, 2007)
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- U.S. has no right to regulate nukes (February 7, 2007)
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by Charles Lim
Monday, February 12, 2007
Have you ever wondered how many nukes you've just bought Iran by putting a full tank of gas in your Geo Metro? How about questioning whether you've just sent a car bomb to your old preschool by filling up twice in one week? If you haven't even wondered, then you just aren't feeling guilty enough. A Florida-based group aims to fix all that with the opening of the first "Terror Free Oil" (TFO) gas station in Omaha, Neb. Adorned with the requisite red, white and blue color scheme, the corner-side station provides the warm guarantee of guilt-tripping the hell out of you if you fill up somewhere else.
The station's parent group, Terror Free Oil Initiative, is seeking to etch itself a niche in the big-boy industry of oil by promising customers they can finally purchase gasoline that is not derived from oil exported from the Middle East. If not from beneath the godforsaken sand dunes of our enemies, from where does the oil come? It turns out TFO's main line of supply comes from Sinclair Oil Corp., which claims most of the company's oil comes from the United States or our Canadian neighbors, and a chunk of the oil is bought on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Wait, the New York Mercantile Exchange? Oil bought from the NYME is by nature a mixed bag of crude oil from different countries worldwide that are all put together in a New York refinery. There is no definitive way to determine where exactly a barrel of NYME-bought oil came from. You are just as likely to be buying a barrel of Iranian blood-oil as you are a barrel of red-blooded American pride. So I guess the station should be re-branded as 90 percent terror free, or maybe two-thirds?
Not if you consider the broader scale. Oil is understood to have the quality of a fungible commodity, or in other words, oil from two different sources is considered identical on the open market. The impact of this quality is that if you stop buying oil from the Middle East and buy exclusively from an American oil producing refinery, the unsold oil from the Middle East is simply picked up by someone else, be it China, Japan or Bulgaria. The end result is that the bad guys get their money anyway. This is not to mention that if demand for "Terror Free" oil shoots up, so will its price, which we all know is not a popular move in the United States. The only way to keep the price down would be for the domestic refineries to steadily increase the amount of oil they buy from international sources and thus negate the "Terror Free" label.
What is that you say? We all must be mindful of the consequences of our actions and it is worth the extra cost not to be part of the problem? To that I say, remember Sinclair uses oil from Canada. The same Canada that uses those funds to sustain its universal health care system that provides aid and comfort to those who wish to take part in the cultivation and exportation of the (oh no!) drug marijuana. I'll let you put your head between your knees and hyperventilate for bit while you think of all the kids you just got high.
In truth, the only way to really cut the profits of those who we assume wish us harm is to reduce overall dependence on oil in general and to have other oil-dependent countries do the same to cut demand. By doing so, we can also try to relieve the guilt of the climate change for which we could be responsible, which is a far greater threat than anything the Middle East can muster.
Charles Lim (celim@wisc.edu) is a sophomore with no declared major.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 7:12am):
Pebble bed nuclear power could solve our problems. Build as many as needed to run everything on electricity. Electric cars cost 2 cents per mile.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 11:22am):
I'm sick of the racist association of arab countries with terrorism. If you want to be more factually accurate Americans are terrorists because we live in the worlds dominant imperial power which has no remorse for the 655,000 iraqis killed in the last four years of war.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 12:36pm):
Here's the problem that's not being addressed: petrol is mostly traded in dollars. If oil is not traded in dollars, then the dollar has no value. Basically, we're no longer on a gold standard, but an oil standard.
Saddam Hussein, before the Iraq war, shifted to trading his oil in Euros. This, amongst various other considerations, was unacceptable to the US military-industrial machine. Prior to the move by Saddam Hussein, the Euro was weaker than the dollar. Subsequently, the Euro strengthened and made Hussein ridiculously more rich. The strengthened Euro was not expected to Saddam, but was icing on the cake for spite of the United States.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 1:05pm):
It's not just about energy. Petroleum is used to manufacture just about everything: plastics, panty hose, industrial materials, hair spray.... the list goes on and on.
Getting rid of the oil dependence is not going to be an easy task, but it starts with denying consumerism.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 1:09pm):
"I'm sick of the racist association of arab countries with terrorism."
The do something about reducing the link, like reducing the number of arab terrorists.
I like the Liberal on the other thread today, leave the arabs alone to kill each other off.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 1:36pm):
In reference to the second anonymous comment, I simply adore the trustworthy nature of liberals to statistics that they agree with. They have no qualms about accepting data that used a mere 47 cluster points for their study where a UN study in Iraq using the same methods used over 300 cluster points. The Johns Hopkins study that came up with the 655,000 dead statistic has been discredited by many self-respecting statisticians around the world. Seriously, get a clue.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 4:18pm):
Does that make any difference, 1:36? There are still dead Iraqis.
Anonymous (February 12, 2007 @ 9:59pm):
"There are still dead Iraqis."
Small change compared to those killed by Saddam. Most of those killed today are dying at the hands of their Moslem brothers, certainly not killed by US soldiers.
Anonymous (October 2, 2007 @ 3:59pm):
not the most does not mean none. just pointing that out.
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