There’s an
old tale about a man in a lifeboat, afloat in the open ocean, without any fresh
water to drink. As far as the eye can see in any direction, his world is
entirely water – and he’s in serious danger of dying of thirst.
“Water, water
everywhere, and not a drop to drink,” goes his refrain.
We’re not so different from that poor soul as we may think. We’re
trapped in a world of abundances that we sometimes find it difficult to access.
One of those
abundances is fuel to energize our industry. The United States sits on
centuries’ worth of coal. Under the sea beds of the Arctic lie
decades’ worth of oil. Yet we struggle with the very real possibility that we
may run out of fuel in just a few years’ time. And our solution is to convert
food crops, at exorbitant cost, to fuel crops.
Sure, you can
turn corn into ethanol. It takes more water to do that than anyone would
believe, and water itself is in short supply in many farming areas. And it
takes a lot of energy, because it has to be cooked. And it seems like a
terrible waste, because corn-derived ethanol makes a better beverage than it
does a fuel. It’s the main ingredient in mint juleps, don’t you know?
And here we
are, in the Santa Ynez Valley, paying higher prices
for motor fuels than almost anyone else in California or anywhere else, while
our coastline is awash in petroleum. It’s not only tucked away underground, it tends to leak out every now and again,
briefly spoiling some rocky beach. Those oil platforms along the county’s
southern coast help keep the pressure down underground so the tar doesn’t ooze
out of coastal crevasses.
So, if we’re
sitting on that oil, why do we have to pay so much for gasoline? Economists
will tell you it’s because price is nature’s rationing system. There isn’t
enough to go around, so high prices act as a brake on demand.
OK, that
seems right enough, but it’s only a piece of the puzzle. Here in California, we
live on an island, a place where barriers keep out motor fuels from other parts
of the world, and from most other parts of the country. And over the past 30
years, California has dismantled a couple of dozen refineries. Today it has
just 13, which, at full capacity, can barely meet the state’s gasoline demand.
That’s the
real reason it costs so doggone much to fill up the family car’s gas tank. Oil
there is aplenty, but gasoline is perpetually in short supply because poor
planning and a failure to find a way to manufacture here what we consume almost
to excess have left us vulnerable. If
we say no to gasoline at high prices, we may be saying no to gasoline
altogether.
And, frankly,
we’ve probably no one to blame but ourselves.
That’ll be
two cents, please.