While shopping last week at my favorite store, Wild Oats, I noticed my favorite cookies, Frookwiches, were on sale?two packages for $4. Well, I’m not one to pass on a bargain (or on cookies for that matter) so I bought six packages. Why not? They’re non perishable, and I had never seen them this cheap.
Unfortunately, half the cookies are gone now. Would this have happened if I’d bought just one or two packages? Probably not?it’s a fact that when you’re running low on something you ration that goody, even just a little bit. Maybe eat three instead of four (or eight) a sitting, maybe every other day rather than daily.
The tendency that does us in is this: When you have more of something, regardless of all your good intentions, human tendencies will take over and you’ll consume more than usual? more than you would have, that is, than if you’d had less. If you don’t believe me then I encourage you to go out, buy your favorite food and then let it sit in the kitchen as you take a nibble only once a day. Judging from the fact that half of Americans may now be obese, it seems that many of us have all the restraint of the Cookie Monster in a Mrs. Fields shop.
Sadly, the Bush Administration is trying to shape our energy policy in defiance of this tendency. The debate is reaching its crescendo, but today is not a day to add to the cacophony, to squabble over details and statistics. Instead, it is time to apply this simple human tendency to the seemingly complex issue.
President Bush has not disappointed in his equivocating on the energy issue, asserting that in order to decrease our dependence on foreign oil we must address production and consumption issues. Well, duh. If you went to your doctor wanting to lose weight, would you accept his advice that “the only way to do it is by eating and exercising?” No, you’d want to know in what proportions to do each. Simply put, the Bush energy plan still has too many calories, skewed toward production and shunning energy saving technology.
The Arctic drilling proposal typifies this idea. If it happens, then our incentive to champion energy-efficiency and conservation takes a hit, once again, all thanks to human nature. We’ll have more oil, so why save oil? Sure we’ll try to save, but progress will be a lot slower. Did you notice how the fervor over fuel-efficient cars has flagged along with the price of gas? More (cheap) gas?less incentive to save.
The dangers of shunning technological solutions will be directly felt in Utah, as an analogous “supply-side” solution to traffic is played out in the Legacy Highway project. Consider these three questions:
If the highway is built then where will be the motivation to get another TRAX line running?
Who will ride that eventual TRAX line if it is built? Almost everybody will be driving! Remember this comes back to human nature here: The highway affords us more access to driving, so where’s the incentive to save via mass transit?
If it is built, won’t pollution get worse? Unequivocally, yes?yes it will. And if you consider BYU’s robust new study revealing the health risks of polluted air areas, this must be a serious question for you and your family.
So where do we turn? Society continually looks toward technology for solutions, and now should be no exception?we need an energy plan that will “work smarter, not harder.” The annual “Future Truck” competition this past summer showcased SUVs that created 53 percent less greenhouse gases while achieving 62 percent better gas mileage. Mind you, these were the creation of students. In 2003 Ford will release an SUV that gets 40 miles per gallon; they are hoping that its slightly higher cost will be offset by tax credits from the government. Any energy plan not bent on procrastination must give precedent to such concerns first, not as an afterthought. Don’t be surprised that hundreds of such technologies exist. They are, in fact, sitting on shelves everywhere, waiting for funding or economic incentive to help them bloom.
U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D North Dakota) recently quipped of energy policy, “the debate doesn’t change, the calendar changes,” a statement that’s been true since the 1970s, when hybrid car research began. Consequently, the halls of Congress may be ringing with these words if the Bush energy plan passes:
“Don’t you think it’s time we get rolling on that plan to increase gas efficiency?”
“Oh, we’ve got time. We’ve got all this oil flowing in from Alaska, don’t we? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“That’s the thing?we never cross that bridge when we come to it. Every time we say let’s cross it, you turn around and start drilling someplace new! First it was the Gulf of Mexico, then Alaska?what’s next, Utah?”
“Oh come on, aren’t there more important things right now? Let’s just look busy and pass a couple more anti-terrorism bills.”
There will come a day when our children or our children’s children look back at us and puzzle over our dependence on oil: an addiction, one we were aware of and chose to ignore. Oil will inevitably become a dinosaur like steam power is to us, a relic of an older, feebler generation.
How to bring its passing?
Technology holds the key, all we have to do is turn it, and turn our backs on hackneyed old solutions that never solve a thing.
Don’t eat the cookie. Let’s leave a better world for those children we purport to care so much about, and let them remember us not as a generation of procrastinators, but at the forefront of a new energy age.
Cris welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to the editor to: [email protected].