We would be wise to start thinking of oil as what it really is, a replacement for other forms of labor. Consider this: a single trucker can load 50,000 pounds of goods in Los Angeles and drive it 1,400 miles to Dallas using approximately 289 gallons of diesel, or one gallon for every 173 pounds of goods delivered. Without oil, how many drivers, horses, and wagons would it take to deliver those goods? How many humans would it take, carrying the goods on their backs? It is the extremely concentrated energy stored in oil that makes it so valuable. As consumers, we focus only on how much per gallon gas costs, not on how much in costly labor it saves.

The search for alternative fuels and energy should be considered key to long-term growth. But we have been searching since the dawn of the Oil Century, and yet even at today’s prices no substitute has been found with an equally low cost of production and equally high-energy output. Until that cost/benefit line can be crossed, oil it is.

LM: Dismiss the issue of American competitiveness? Give a gallon of oil to Japan and they’ll turn it into twice as much GDP as we do, even though we’re all paying the same price for the oil on the international market—that puts us at a disadvantage. (If we were as productive as Japan we’d be producing well more than 25 percent of the world’s GDP.) I don’t have the figures for your hypothetical trucker, but let’s say we’ve got a hard-working organ donation institute employee who needs to drive coolers around in a car. Her European counterpart will use 37 percent less oil to go the same number of miles, which means she can deliver a third more organs, and generate more GDP.

Oil may be “it” at the moment, but our overwhelming dependence on it for transportation—while other economies make more use of railroads or water—and our relatively poor productivity are hurting us. Independent truckers are feeling the pain already. And the rest of us are paying more for everything on those trucks—from baby lettuce to FedEx to deck chairs from China. Precisely because oil is “it” at the moment we need to use it more efficiently, and look for substitutes. Natural gas, in Utah at least, is already a far cheaper auto and truck fuel than oil. It’s also much cleaner. Biogas, made from manure, could also fit that niche profitably because its flow is steady and its cost fixed—both advantages when prices of natural gas are volatile.

Tomorrow’s debate question: Does the media hype, underreport, or adequately cover peak oil?

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