Beating the nation’s oil addiction involves more than just gasoline

“We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

It’s a phrase you hear a lot these days, and it’s long overdue. But how seriously is this goal being pursued? Is this for real, or is it just lip service?

Unfortunately, I have the tendency to believe the latter.

While it’s all well and good to talk of and develop hybrid cars and vehicles that run on alternative fuels, such as biodiesel, the problem runs far deeper than just what the more than 235 million cars in the U.S. prefer to drink, as astounding as that statement may seem on the surface. It certainly would help a lot if those cars were to drink a lot less, but the trend of increased fuel efficiency died out in the late 1980s, when apparently everyone collectively forgot about the gas crises of the prior decade.

Obviously, the popular trend of SUVs and gas guzzling vehicles and the willingness of people to continue to buy them has a lot to do with oil consumption, but again, there’s more to the American oil addiction than that.

And, there’s more to it than how much oil is consumed heating our homes.

See, our oil addiction runs so deep, we’ve forgotten all about the other things we’re dependent upon petroleum products for.

There’s the obvious, but oft-forgotten use of fossil fuels to run electrical generating plants and natural gas production.

Our roads are petroleum-based, and it’s not just by-product. The price of oil has affected the price of roads—I’ve heard the complaint at local municipal meetings many times that the square foot price of repaving has nearly doubled since oil prices skyrocketed last year.

Have you forgotten about plastic? It’s everywhere—and it’s petroleum-based. It’s also the number one material used for throwaway items—lighters, pens, gift cards, grocery bags, soda bottles, I could go on forever, but just look around you.


Wherever you are, there is plastic. Even in “natural” areas, plastic can’t be escaped. It shows up in the form of litter, and sometimes more officially on trail markers and signage. And, to add to the amount of petroleum product involved in driving, a huge percentage of your car is also made of petroleum-based plastic. (Not to mention that its paint has a petroleum-based solvent, and its fabric upholstery is also made of a petroleum-based synthetic fiber.)

Plastic is now the main form of food wrapping, despite the fact that some of that plastic leeches into the food (which is harmless, industry experts say). But that’s not the only way our food has become dependent on petroleum products.

Many, if not most, commercial fertilizers used on factory farms (the most prevalent kind of farm these days, it seems) are also petroleum-based. So not only is our food kept fresh by petroleum (electricity to run the ’fridges, and literally wrapped in it), but it’s literally grown on the stuff. Biofuel from corn oil? Sure, but only after you fertilize the corn with a petroleum-based fertilizer, which is why that’s the one alternative fuel option you’ll actually see petroleum company executives say they support. That doesn’t mean biofuels aren’t an option, just that corn might not be the ideal answer.

There are undoubtedly ideal or near-ideal alternatives to all of the products we currently rely upon petroleum to provide. In fact, in many cases, petroleum replaced an older version of a product.

Plastic, for instance, is not a modern idea. Literally, it just means “moldable,” and early versions of what we generically call “plastic” abound. Horn, used to make hair combs and buttons, among many, many other things, is one version of a naturally occurring plastic substance—when it’s heated, it becomes pliable enough to mold. (By the way, before I get creamed by animal rights folks, horn commonly used for this purpose is naturally shed.) Rubber was a key ingredient in a Victorian-era “plastic” called gutta percha. And, while not common, the words cellophane and celluloid are familiar to many people, even if most don’t realize the two terms refer to forms of vegetable-based plastic common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Many old-time vegetable-based plastics had the “unfortunate” characteristic of yellowing and degrading fairly quickly, something that would probably be a blessing, if not a downright selling point in many products today. Modern plastics get scratched and grungy in just a short amount of time, a few months to a few years, depending on purpose and use, but they don’t degrade for an estimated 20,000 years. Those so-called “biodegradable” plastics just break down into tiny plastic particles—that don’t break down for the same 20,000 years.

That’s an awfully long time to be stuck with something useless, just for the convenience of using something for a year or two at most.

One of the marks of an addiction is that the addicted needs more and more to feed their habit. It is not any form of exaggeration to say that the U.S. is addicted to petroleum—we’ve literally based nearly every modern industry around it over the past century.

Certainly, there will always be problems and obstacles to be overcome, and it may well be that diversification in both energy sources and raw materials is what is necessary to truly solve our petroleum problem. But until we really try and attack the whole of our dilemma, not just the glaringly obvious, politically expedient bits, we will never really be able to kick the habit.

(Originally published in The Easton News, December 14, 2006)