Big Tanker, Big Problems

At this hour I’m unaware of how much damage the latest tanker incident in Alaska has done. I’ve been to Alaska, and I loved it - I hope any spill is minimal. I remember an exchange from Captain Hazelwood’s trial in which the defense was trying to make points about reporting the incident promptly and the judge said, “You think we wouldn’t have noticed a spill the size of Rhode Island?” Please, not another one of those.
I grew up seeing oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and they’re so big you can actually notice the curvature of the earth with them. They don’t just move away; they begin to drop out of view behind the round surface of our planet. That’s what I thought about after hearing this news today.
I also thought back to last summer when I stood atop the Sears Tower in Chicago and saw the endless, multi-lane freeways extending in every direction except out on the lake. The roads – some looked like 12 lanes – were completely full of cars moving quickly, and it was a Sunday afternoon. Big endless herds of cars heading somewhere. I had the eerie feeling I was looking at something from history like the great migrations of buffalo that used to roam across the mid-west part of this continent. This can’t go on forever, can it?
You know, it’s a little misleading to discuss oil simply in terms of transportation. I bet most Americans think of it as what gets refined and put in a car. I read a book called “Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil” by Michael C. Ruppert. It’s pretty controversial, claiming among other things that there was U.S. government involvement in 9/11, but the book does a great job of spelling out our situation with the oil supply. He details the role of oil in the production of food, and so many other things, following it to your purchase with a credit card. The kicker is that even the credit card itself is an oil product.
The book centers on Peak Oil as the crisis behind everything we’re seeing now. I’ve avoided using the phrase Peak Oil myself – I think you lose a segment of the audience immediately when you bring it up - but let me just say there was a time when the phrase “global warming” was in a similar position. Not many people scoff at global warming anymore.
I also remain optimistic that somehow we’ll get out of this energy problem with a major breakthrough. If necessity is the mother of invention, we’re about to face the mother of all necessities. Besides, if the population of the world has doubed from 1950 to 2000, we might have two new Einsteins. I’m pulling for something involving zero point energy, and cracking the mystery of gravity. Don’t laugh. It’s going to take something on that level.
So I’m not using the phrase Peak Oil (much). What I do instead is just read the news and take note of the subtle details about the oil industry. What does it mean that the tanker was being loaded in dangerous icy conditions? Obviously, there’s big money involved here, but there’s something else. We are the beast, and right now the beast needs oil. For how much it affects our lives we might as well be eating the stuff for dinner.