Fuel Folly: We're better off without cheap gas

By Carl Pope

Every civilization has its blind spots--ideas so profoundly embedded in the culture that they are rarely even debated, but so fundamentally flawed that they can steer a whole society onto the rocks.

Such governing follies are the theme of Jared Diamond's most recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. He shows how they often spring from outdated notions of past abundance. The idea that Easter Island had lots of trees, for example, persisted until they were all cut down. Greenland once had enough grass to support cattle, so Viking settlers stubbornly stuck with pasturage even when the Little Ice Age drastically cooled the climate.

Our own folly is cheap fuel. The United States once had large oil reserves, and they made us rich and powerful. Ergo, cheap fuel--oil, coal, nuclear, or whatever--is seen as being key to our continued prosperity and future security. This gusher mentality deforms our society and economy. It leads the United States to sabotage international efforts to combat global warming, tolerate a huge trade deficit that has destroyed millions of manufacturing jobs, and keep military bases in the Middle East, where they serve as rallying points for terrorists. And it's why the U.S. auto industry continues to promote size and performance over safety and efficiency.

For the rest of the article, see "Fuel Folly".