Oil, how I love thee...

Hi. My name is Derick. I'm addicted to oil.

Crude oil is a wonderful substance, like no other. It provides fuels, like gasoline, that contain huge amounts of energy in a fairly safe, transportable form which allows us to do tremendous amounts of work at a very low cost. Gas at $4 per gallon is still a fantastic bargain.

Consider what it was like before we learned to harness crude oil's power with the internal combustion engine. The best means of transportation were horses, boats and eventually bicycles and trains.

Today, you can own a car with the power of a huge team of horses which can go faster than any horse could dream of going, can keep going hour after hour with only brief stops for “feeding” and at a very low cost per mile covered and you can cross the country from coast to coast in three days. You can go anywhere you want, whenever you want.

Once we figured out how to harness crude oil, air travel became possible and most boats and trains went over to crude oil simply because it was far more efficient than the next best alternative.

And the next best alternative is the real issue. What is the next best alternative? We don't have a good answer to this question yet, and this is the crux of our problem. We are used to a cheap form of easily accessible energy. The alternatives suffer from significant disadvantages such as higher costs of production, inability to produce sufficient quantities, lower energy capacity by volume and weight, greater pollution, insufficiently developed technologies, etc.

For example, nuclear energy is more dangerous. There is the direct risk of an incident like Chernobyle (or Mayak, or Windscale, or Three Mile Island), but even setting aside accidents, there is all the nuclear waste -- we still have not figured out how to deal with nuclear waste in a reasonable and sustainable way. Dropping it into the depths of the ocean or burying it on Indian reservations is neither reasonable nor sustainable.

I'm not saying that we should not develop alternative sources of energy. To the contrary, developing alternatives should be our highest priority. But we need to understand why crude oil is such a great addiction.

Crude oil is like crack. It is the quickest way to get you where you want to go with the least investment. And once you are hooked on the quick high of crack, it's hard to go back.

My name is Derick. I'm addicted to Crude Oil. But I'm worried that going to meetings isn't going to be enough. I need an alternative place to fix my need. Please help.

And for those who asked, I prefer my crude bitter, not sweet....

-Derick for Crudeawakening.org