Cars are the Father of Devils - Oil IS the Devil

The price of oil touched over $60 again today and pundits did what pundits do, namely talk a lot of garbage. It escapes me how an intelligent man or woman with a PhD in something that involved math can get on the idiot box and say, "Well, America isn't really dependent on Middle Eastern oil." The logic (if you can call it that) is that only a small percentage of America's oil imports come from the Middle East. Most of the oil comes from Canada, Mexico and South America, along with Nigeria and the UK. There are two primary reasons for this, first, the length of the supply line (cheaper to import from closer countries) and second the suitability of the crude for our refineries, essentially a matter of tradition. What the pundits never want to admit is that there's really only one oil market in the world. If Russia stops supplying oil to Germany and France, does anybody believe they will simply go without, or will they bid up the price on oil from our traditional suppliers? If the mullas in Iran close the spigot, will the Chinese and the Japanese shut down their economies, or will they buy some of our "share" from the Saudis? These truths I hold self evident.

Sometimes, if you really want to know the truth of a matter, you have to consult somebody who has no preconceptions. An excellent example of this was given by an article run 100 years ago today in the NYT under the heading "SHOWED FIJI ISLANDERS THEIR FIRST MOTOR CAR," and subtitled "Natives Called Mr. Glidden's Auto Father of Devils." An excerpt follows:

FINE ROADS NEAR ANTARTIC
Those in Australia, He Says, Resembled the Route from Albany to Utica - Pause in His World Tour

Charles J Glidden, the world touring automobilist, who has traveled more than 25,000 miles in his motor car in foreign lands in the past four years, arrived home yesterday on the steamer Kronprinz Wilhelm. Mrs. Glidden accompanied her husband. She has been with him in every mile of his trip in his big gasoline touring car.

They ran over nobody, had no accidents, and were only delayed one hour for repair.

"Automobiles have had some pretty hard names given to them," said Mr. Glidden, "But the natives of Fiji, who are only one generation removed from cannibalism, devised a name for my machine which is full as good as those originated by more civilized individuals. They styled it "The Father of Devils." As it was the first automobile that ever entered the Fiji Islands, I don't blame them. When they saw that it did not scatter death and ruin in its wake they eased up on the name a little and called it 'boat on the road'"

The implication of "They ran over nobody, had no accidents," is that running somebody over doesn't count as an accident, unless of course it damages the big gasoline touring car. What we learned about the Fiji Islanders from this story is they take a very accurate first impression but lack temporal vision. If they could see the future, they would know that the automobile indeed scatters death and ruin in it's wake, and will certainly cause more death and ruin in the future. While technological innovation have made cars somewhat safer over recent years, for both passengers and the environment, the incredible increase in the number of vehicles on the road worldwide must outweigh this. The Fiji Islanders, while blameless in the matter, were also ignorant of a little thing called strategic interest, and oil is the possibly the world most strategically valuable commodity parked in one of the most volatile regions of the world. Well, addicts will do anything to feed their addiction, and in the coming years, I expect that anything is exactly what we'll do.