It hardly ever fails. A few moments after we put food on my son’s plate or bowl, before he’s even close to finishing it, he asks the same question: is there more? More macaroni and cheese, more cheerios, more biscuits, more grits, more, more, more whatever. We are trying to teach him to eat what’s on his plate first, to take only as much as he can eat. Eventually we’ll dust off the old “there are people starving in ...,” but for now he won’t hear of it. He’s single-minded about getting his fill, which I suppose is a survival instinct that one day may serve him well.

Survival, really, is at the heart of why so many people in this country are arguing so strongly against the recently renewed effort to drill for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. Even if we leave environmental arguments out of this — and there are legitimate concerns about how this could affect this pristine wilderness area — the reasons not to drill outweigh the the reasoning being used to start siphoning the oil.

A pittance of oil here, some offshore natural gas there, and we go merrily  yet with one eye closed, winking — on our way, never making the hard choices to change how we do things.

Of course this oil will temporarily stave off an even deeper dependance on Arab imports (but it will be years before we draw the first drop). Of course in this widening economic recession the prospect of more and continued cheap oil will warm the hearts of industrialists, small businessmen and jobless factory workers (but it will be years before we draw the first drop).

The administration is pulling out all the stops. Supporters are using the terrorist strikes, the Afghan war and the recession to convince Americans to approve drilling.

“The ANWR is simply not just a place to drill oil, it is the largest potential domestic source of oil,” says Interior Secretary Gail Norton. “This is a matter necessary for security and also to enhance economic recovery.”

As Norton and others in Congress (most Republicans and a few Democrats) muster forces for their plan to take up to 16 billion barrels of oil out of these Alaskan wildlands, there remains serious scientific questions about raw data she and others are using. The U.S. Geological Survey says there is only a 5 percent chance that 16 billion barrels of oil are recoverable. That agency says about 10.4 billion barrels might be available, and as little as 5.7 billion barrels. The discrepancy in all these numbers are due to what oil companies refer to as “economically recoverable” reserves. These are known deposits that can be extracted and refined at a profit. If oil prices drop, these numbers go down.

Two weeks ago oil was selling at $15.35 a barrel. According to the USGS, no oil would be “economically recoverable” from ANWR if the price drops to less than $13 a barrel.

So along with the environmental questions, add some real doubts about the geological truths being used to move this complicated issue forward.

When President Bush released his production-heavy energy plan a few months ago, supporters immediately chided those who said America needs to change its ways instead of focusing on an energy policy that simply finds ways to guzzle and produce more energy. Those supporters said we won’t ride buses, won’t drive less powerful cars that use less gas, won’t sacrifice huge homes for practicality and efficiency. You won't change the American way of life, they said, so don’t try to make us more efficient. The answer, in short, was to keep feeding the beast.

Those who made those arguments, according to the evidence I’ve seen, are mostly correct. Things will get much worse before Americans make wholesale changes in their lifestyles. The truth is that they have gotten worse. According to a recent Environmental Protection Agency report, cars and SUVs last year had the lowest average gas mileage since 1980. According to a national business magazine, the average mileage in 2000 was 24.2 miles per gallon for cars and 17.3 mpg for trucks. “That’s far below the standards vehicles are currently supposed to meet: 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 mpg for light trucks. If light trucks, which include SUVs, had to meet the required level for cars, that would save a million barrels of oil a day, according to the Alliance to Save Energy,” said the magazine.

A million barrels of day is significant considering that Americans now use about 9 million barrels a day. That kind of savings could be had if lawmakers would force manufacturers of SUVs and trucks to get better gas mileage, a move that could be phased in over several years to reduce the cost.

The other obvious way to reduce energy use is to raise the price. In California last summer, we saw what happened when electricity prices went through the roof. Local governments, companies and individuals learned how to conserve, and they learned very quickly.

All these energy-saving practices are the right thing to do. My 3-year-old wants more than he needs, but we know that is simply not the way the world operates. While this country knows a lot about conserving energy and fossil fuels, we don’t practice it because we don’t have to.

This character trait, doing things one knows to be wrong, is well documented by great thinkers. Not much that I learned from my philosophy classes in college ever became relevant, but one of Aristotle's lessons stuck in my mind. We all suffer, at one time or another, from what the Greeks called “akrasia.” That’s the term for the character flaw of incontinence, or weakness of the will. Aristotle was greatly troubled by the fact that many people are unable to perform actions they know to be right.

Socrates thought doing good followed directly from knowing what was good. In this case, if we knew using less energy was good, we all would do it. Aristotle knew better. He went into great detail discussing the apparent contradiction in men who knew they shouldn’t do certain things but had a passionate desire to do them. The knowledge that something is wrong becomes like the knowledge of a drunken man. The truth loses its force. He knows it is wrong, yet continues to do it.

And so we stagger along, drunkenly, following national leaders who encourage us to get behind a policy of continuing to use more and more. We all know change must come, will come, but we refuse to accept it. Drilling in ANWR probably won’t deprive us of this fabulous wilderness area (though it could with one, big mishap), but it also does absolutely nothing to solve our national energy problems. It is a few more drops for a short time, a step in the wrong direction that is being taken for the wrong reasons. We need to back off.

(McLeod can be reached at info@smokymountainnews.com)

 

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