OIL AND THANKSGIVING
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We love driving the back roads as we
did this past week. We had been to some lectures in Yakima and were on our
way to visit some folks and sights in Walla Walla and Spokane.
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With little or no traffic and long vistas
amidst rolling wheat fields there was some time for thinking. I had been
reading an article in USA Today (given free at our motel!) with the title
“Has Oil Production Peaked?” I had just been reading a book on the subject
by James Kunstler called “The Long Emergency” which talked about life after
oil. I remembered a quotation by Ken Deffeyes who predicts the peak as Thanksgiving
2005 “with an uncertainty factor of only three or four weeks on either side.”
(p. 59)
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Thanksgiving 2005! The date that the
world begins running out of oil.
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As I drive along I try to think of a
world without oil. Kunstler doesn't think the alternative fuels are going
to come along soon enough or abundantly enough to help.
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We are driving in a part of Washington
we call “The Palouse.” My dad was born there in Adams County in Washtucna.
He used to tell us of life there before oil. Seeing those large, air conditioned
tractors and combines, I realize that they depend on oil. Even the fertilizers
that bring up the bushels per acre are based on natural gas.
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In my dad's time everyone used horses.
He used to drive the wagons that brought the wheat in from the fields. Then
he drove the horse-driven combines pulled by up to 20 horses. Those were
the days when horse power meant horse power.
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They didn't have oil except for their
lamps which they needed because there wasn't any electricity either.
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What if we had to return to that kind
of living? There would be terrible consequences, because we're so spoiled
by the easy availability of oil and because we have lost the knowledge of
how to do without it. The world population has risen from 1 billion in 1800
to about 6 and ½ billion today. Without oil many would starve.
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We wouldn't be driving our car on a
trip like this of almost 1500 miles from Corvallis and back. There wouldn't
be asphalt highways. There wouldn't be plastics or many of the materials
that go into a car. No matter. We wouldn't need cars if we had no oil.
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I thought of the Amish. People laugh
at them, but not so loudly these days. They have never given up their horse
and buggy style of life. They have been virtually oil free. They have the
kind of self sufficiency most of us never had.
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I began thinking of a Thanksgiving service
for our Moment group. I wondered what songs we might sing. The old chorus,
“Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, burning, give me oil in my lamp
I pray…” I’ll set Paul to thinking up some verses. “Give me oil in my lamp,
keep it burning…Give me oil in my car, keep it running…Give me oil in my
chainsaw, keep it cutting…Give me oil in my mower, keep it mowing…”
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We wound our way up a high point called
Steptoe Butte with views as far as you can see in every direction. It would
take a day walking, a half day on a horse, but only a few minutes by car.
Native people had walked up this Butte for thousands of years. Only in the
last 100 years have there been vehicles here. What will it be like 100 years
from now?
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I was thankful that we were driving
our more economical car. We were getting 34 miles per gallon on the run from
Walla Walla to Spokane. We were conserving fuel, but honesty causes me to
admit that I was more interested in savings at the gas pump. Why haven't
we been more interested in conserving a limited resource like oil? Don't
we appreciate it enough to want to extend its life on planet earth? Will
it be here for my grandchildren's children? I thought of Jimmy Carter, much
maligned for his attempts to get Americans free of dependency on foreign
oil. There was a brief period of conservation until Americans resented a
life style requiring lowered speed limits and other oil saving efforts. I
realized that my car at that time lasted 340,000 miles in good condition.
Tires lasted longer too. Imagine the heat reduction when speed is lowered
by 10 or 15%! But conservation is not an American priority I guess.
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I tried to think of a biblical text
for this subject. “Thou anointest my head with oil…” or the text about
the wise and foolish virgins, the foolish being the ones that took no oil
for their lamps. Maybe they were conserving, but what good is a lamp with
no oil? At any rate it raises the question. Where would you be without oil?
Can you live without it? Can we have it without going to war for it? Can
we extend it by conserving it?
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I'm down to three quarters of a tank,
I notice. Better fill up. We start running out on Thanksgiving.
— Art Morgan, October 21, 2005
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