When You Get the Mass Oil E-mail, Use This

[written by a friend to her niece]

A) This is utter nonsense. Prices rise when demand exceeds supply. Demand is increasing exponentially. Production (supply) either has already begun or will soon begin its inevitible and permanent decline. The era of cheap, easy oil is over. From now on, we spend more energy to get less energy with a much greater destruction of the habitat on which our lives depend. It is hardly the Saudis "gauging us on oil prices."

It could be argued that our elected officials have worked very hard to keep the "non-negotiable" American lifestyle 100% dependent on oil. Our addiction to oil lines their pockets. Certainly, OPEC must be glad to have the US as a thoroughly dependent customer, but China and India are becoming oil junkies as well and, en masse, have much greater potential as profligate consumers. So if you want to strangle someone, you could look closer to home.

More productive, though, than looking about for someone to strangle might be learning ways to reduce our dependence on oil. Michael Pollan has estimated that one fifth of our oil consumption is used in industrial agriculture, more than is used in transportation. So learning to eat local, in-season, and low on the food chain would likely reduce your consumption of OPEC oil more than buying your gas from Shell. (Rather than tell you which page of which book you can check that data on, I'll suggest you read both "Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food.")

B) Now, on to the subject of exponential distribution of mass emails. There is a reason the original emailer of this message was delerious about reaching THREE MILLION!!! or THREE HUNDRED MILLION!!!!! people. This is spammer heaven. Most of people who send mass emails don't use the blind copy feature, so most of three million addresses will be visible for harvest by spammers.

I also understand that some of these emails are started by students doing (often very intriguing) research of one sort or another.

C) In any event, these emailers have their own agendas, and accuracy is not a high priority. So, for example, contrary to what is reported in the email you forwarded, the Deptment of Energy reports that "Conoco" (which is reported by the DOE as Conoco Phillips), "BP Phillips (which is reported as BP Products), and Valero did buy Persian Gulf oil in 2007, while the DOE has no 2007 listing at all for Hess, ARCO, or Maverick. Sadly, many of those "urgent virus warnings" that you should forward to everyone you know are also hoaxes. A little fact checking is usually in order if you value accuracy.