There Will Be Blood

Dr. John Brobst, the instructor for my class in Oil and World Power, made an interesting assertion today. He challenged the rhetoric of proclaiming American (and other nations) "addiction" to oil. Specifically he questioned whether the term addiction really applies.

Addiction implies a disorder caused by a chronic and gripping dependence on a particular substance. The symptom and the disease are one. If the substance can simply be taken out of the equation than the disorder is resolved.

Dr. Brobst made a compelling argument that this analogy doesn't hold water. Removing oil from the American economy and way of life would bring society as we know it to a halt, literally. He explained that the foundation of the modern economy is mobility. Almost everything is based on the ability of goods, services, and, not least of all, people, to be able to move reliably from one location to another. (I also couldn't imagine a world without plastic.) The ability for societies to achieve this is possible entirely through oil. He mentioned that the most common correlation for oil and its relation to the 20th century economy and society is blood. This is a perfect illustration why the concept of oil as an addiction is flawed - while humans are dependent on blood, it is not something we could ever "kick." It is like life itself.

I do at least see the industrialized world's dependence on oil as a dependence, which is akin to addiction. And in some ways, I think the analogy does hold up.

In today's class we actually began to follow the course of the West's "experimentation" with hydrocarbons. It started with coal, which I call a "gateway hydrocarbon." Coal was really awesome, so Britain used it a lot. Then it started telling its friends how awesome coal was, and soon everyone was doing it. Pretty soon a whole crowd of nations were "using" coal - we call this the Industrial Revolution. In my paradigm, as you might have picked up on, coal is like marijuana, and the Industrial Revolution (late 1700s to late 1800s, roughly) would be like, let's say the mid to late 1960s.

In this proposed model I liken oil to cocaine. Economies could run faster, more efficient, do amazing things that seemed next to impossible just a short time before. The only problem is that the more oil you use, the more you want, nay, need. Before long oil became the basis for all industrialized economies, and as these economies grew and expanded demand for oil expanded as well. The habit was fully developed. Pretty soon all the younger kids (the developing world) started copying what the cool kids (the developed world) were doing. This continues today.

As I said, quitting cold turkey would be disastrous. You would not recognize the world around you without oil, whether you realize it or not. But in a sense this is like an addiction. It is usually not enough to just quit the substance, it takes a fundamental life change, and fundamental change in the way society and the economy approach energy. Let's say renewable energy sources are like the 12 Step Program.

This is really just meant as a fun intellectual exercise because I do agree with Dr. Brobst's point that the oil as an addiction model is conceptually flawed, although not to be discounted entirely. But I also believe the notion of oil as the blood of life or "the blood of victory" as Clemenceau put it, while true, is dangerous rhetoric to be taken as gospel. Consumption, and indeed dependence on oil, has many dangerous consequences, only some of which we have seen realized. But that is for another blog.

The notion of oil as blood of course evokes one of my favorite movies There Will Be Blood. It is the story of a greed stricken, socio-pathic oil barron whose corruption mirrors the (in my opinion) stark moral void that has accompanied the growth of the oil industry and America's transfusion of oil as the life-blood of the economy.