To the Last Drop

Maybe oil-addicted America can turn tricks for the Saudis.

by David Faris

Saudi Arabia gave President Bush the appropriate response to his petulant begging for more oil last week, and it basically amounted to telling him he could go back to his fake ranch and buy a Prius. The Saudis are surely tired of being treated like dope dealers for some mainlining heroin addict who's out of cash. It's not their fault that millions of Americans are still tooling around in Canyoneros that get 8 miles a gallon and building gigantic houses with 40-mile commutes to the city.

Of course it is not just GOP oil junkies who seem to think the Saudis can wish away the problem of dwindling oil supplies. The Democratic-controlled Senate is pushing for legislation to pull arms funding from Saudi Arabia if they don't pump more oil. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for stopping weapons sales to brutal dictatorships, and particularly to the corrupt, misogynist Neptocrats running that country, but does no one understand that there is no more oil to pump?

Observers have been warning for years that Saudi Arabia may not have the excess capacity that it used to — one more sign that the world has entered the age of Peak Oil, when more than half of global petroleum reserves have been consumed. With supply slowly dwindling and demand skyrocketing from places like India and China, it's clear that a gallon of gas is soon going to cost more than a beer at Citizens Bank Park.

You wouldn't know it from the cowering paranoiacs who call the Homeland Security hot line every time they see a Muslim, but energy security, not terrorism, is the greatest threat facing the U.S. and all of advanced industrial civilization. If we don't undertake a massive collective effort to find new energy sources, our entire way of life — from air travel to cheap pharmaceuticals to the global food chain — will be imperiled.

The high price of gas should not be used as a bludgeon to punish oil-producers — most of whom are doing absolutely everything they can to pump oil and find new fields. It should be a wake-up call that we need to change the way we live, and quickly. Because while the price of oil may drop temporarily due to a global economic downturn, the underlying reality is that we are running out of the stuff and that the crisis is going to hit long before the last drops are sucked out.

You may have noticed increases lately in the price of basically everything. Airlines are dropping out of the sky like the frogs at the end of Magnolia. Food costs are jumping and landlords are no longer providing heat and hot water to their tenants.

Friends in the Philly burbs paid more than two grand for their heating oil between September and April, and they don't have their own private lake like John McCain. Ordinary people are terrified of the heating bills they'll face this coming winter, and yet the president probably sees this as another opportunity to cut taxes for rich people.

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Bush showed minor signs of finally seeing the depth of the problem when he returned home from Riyadh, calling for renewed efforts at conservation and a search for alternative energy sources. But where is the presidential leadership, the calls for sacrifice in the name of the higher good, and the policies that might lead to a solution?

Those things are in the same place as expectations that Bush might do anything right in his eight years in office — your imagination. Unfortunately for the people whose economic livelihoods are threatened by higher energy prices, this crisis is quite real, and unlike the president, it won't be making a welcome exit next January.

David Faris is a frequent Slant contributor. To reply to his or write one of your own, e-mail bhoward@citypaper.net.