Over at slate.com, I found this Q&A column dealing with the offshore drilling issue and whether such drilling would really affect gas prices at all. The writer concludes what some others have been saying as well: that such drilling ultimately would have very little to no affect on prices and, yes, would, of course, have some negative environmental effects, contrary to all the pro-drilling propaganda about how new, cleaner, and safer technology will now allow us to have it both ways and blah, blah, blah.

The key portion of this particular column, however, is the last paragraph, in which the writer looks past the potential environmental or economic effects to possible affects on behavior and comes pretty close to what I have thought about all this ever since I first started hearing all the calls for drilling:

The bigger danger from the push for drilling—or more exactly, the arguments used on its behalf—may be how it affects our own behavior. If we pretend that offshore drilling is a fail-safe means of lowering oil prices (or even a likely means), we may hold on to rosy and unreasonable expectations for future gas prices… That will in turn change the calculations we make when it comes to long-term decisions like whether to shell out extra cash for a more fuel-efficient car or a home with access to mass transit. As long as we’re counting on gas prices to go down, those green lifestyle choices won’t seem as attractive. We may well be surprised once again that we’re paying so much at the pump, without having done anything about it.

That points to the heart of the matter for me. The call for drilling anywhere and everywhere we can is not only a misleading political canard filled with false hope; more importantly, it entirely dodges central problems in our society which the gas price situation should be helping to bring to everyone’s attention. The whole notion of “oil independence” is a complete distraction from the deeper discussions we should be having. Where we get oil, or how much we pay for it at a given time, is not nearly as important as is the fact we have recklessly and shortsightedly set up life in almost total dependence on it, making all kinds of choices as if taking relative cheapness and easy availability for granted eternally.

A positive way to look at the current situation is it gives many people a very personal incentive to consider making sensible lifestyle changes, if possible, and can get all of us thinking about more sensible shifts in planning and development. And before someone assumes I have one particular issue in mind for desiring such changes, there are plenty of good reasons to think changes are in order; be they environmental, economic, individual, social, local community, longterm sustainability; take your pick. Out of those categories come many valid and connected concerns (beyond the scope of this post) that have grown out of our modern suburban car culture.

But I guess most people would rather not hear that they should consider making some changes. Enter politicians to save the day with seemingly simple solutions, dubiously suggesting no personal or dramatic infrastructural changes are necessary, and the path we have been on for the last few decades is completely fine. As the Slate writer rightly suggested, the problem with those arguing for drilling is they are pushing nothing more than a possible slight and temporary pain reliever and treating it like a real solution that will prevent people from needing to think about any changes for however long it takes to come up with new energies to fuel their cars just as cheaply; in short, they come across as stubbornly resistant to any real change and don’t help us seriously act now to find ways to adjust on every level and ultimately do things better.

Of course, I should clarify that, because some do give lip service to the need to work toward new technologies/find alternative energy sources even while they argue we should drill everywhere we can for the time being. But their argument goes: drilling now is necessary because such energy alternatives are just too far off in the future to count on right now. Never mind that it would also be many, many years before any potential price impact from drilling would be experienced anyway. But what I still find most troubling is the drilling crowd’s apparent refusal to, in any way, call into question the illogical ways we have set things up in the first place. Take, for example, the Newt Gingrich led organization American Solutions and their campaign, “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.” In their paper titled, “The New Language of Smart Energy”, I noticed this key line about energy efficiency,

…what Americans are looking for is energy efficiency… Automobiles such as the wildly successful Tahoe ‘Hybrid’ are a positive step in the right direction. These innovations prove that we can succeed sans great personal sacrifice in our day to day lives.

Sure, we can probably all agree continuing to work toward more energy efficiency is a good thing. But there are a couple problems with the specific message here. For one thing, that line reads a little bit like a misleading Chevrolet advertisement, because I’m not sure how great the gas savings would really be in the end after you’ve factored in the large sum one must fork over for such a hybrid SUV. But more importantly, the above statement begs the obvious question: just what exactly does “sacrifice” mean to these people? Or, I could also ask, what is their understanding of the word “excess?” Is “sacrifice” for them having to drive at a bare minimum and barely get around because of the cost, or is “sacrifice” Americans having to actually think twice before buying a monster, gas-guzzling SUV they don’t really need anyway? Judging from the aforementioned paper, It seems like “sacrifice” is more of the latter for the people at American Solutions. (Later in the paper, for example, they point out the need to always use the word “efficiency” rather than “conservation” when talking about energy because “conservation” is, in their minds, a dirty word to most Americans in comparison because it means living with “less.” Well, that sums it all up right there. They are basically telling everyone, “Sure, things need to change, but YOU should not FEEL the need to conserve or sacrifice ANYTHING. Technology will take care of it all for YOU and cater to YOUR behavior.”)

Well, forgive me for thinking that the rethinking of driving big SUVs would not be an incredibly significant sacrifice. And furthermore, I don’t think having greater incentive now as well to take related things like walkability, access to transit, or other alternatives to everyday, all-purpose automobile use into consideration when choosing where to live is much of a sacrifice either. All of these things seem sensible to me.

Granted, such things probably often seem like sacrifice in our culture because of the way we have catered almost exclusively to the car. But it is irresponsible to suggest it is possible to hold on to such development forever without great cost and the sacrifice of something. Everything has costs (not only economic) and relative sacrifices. And living in distant suburbs often comes with a complete, everyday automobile dependence, which, though we often take it as a given now, is a big cost across the board and can even be quite an individual burden. And there is a residual cost to people living in or near central cities in the form of struggling transit services, barely kept afloat, so that there are very limited transportation choices for anyone, even while sprawl has left the great majority in need of some form of motored transportation to subsist.

So, rather than talking about sacrifice, we could flip all this around and argue most of us have had it too easy for some time now with unique conditions, relatively cheap gas, and concomitant policies. And that has caused us to generally not care very much where things are built, how efficiently everything is planned, how dependent we are on cars due to how far we live from the basic necessities of modern living, whether there are sidewalks, bike lanes or transportation diversity, or care about public transit in general for that matter. As a result, we built a largely car-centric world without having to think about the long-term implications, consequences, and costs.

Having said all that, I do want to be sensitive to the broad scope of this issue and the difficulties it brings to all areas of our society as well as all the different styles of life and individual/communal concerns, needs and limited choices our development has left us with. I know my point of view is biased by my own lifestyle, which is not widely shared. I have personally found it enjoyable and quite beneficial (with a comparatively small sacrifice in convenience) to live in a small central city where I can walk, ride my bike, or take the bus nearly anywhere I need to go day-to-day. Consequently, the gas price issue has had very little affect on me. I know, however, not everyone wants to or can share in such a lifestyle, and I am not suggesting that they should. I understand not everyone wants to live in central cities or generally dense areas, and I also can understand why living in smaller, suburban, and exurban areas as well as having car mobility is often desirable.

But I am really trying to suggest two things here: One, our suburban sprawl living now, just as before, entails huge individual and long-term communal costs (the burden of total car dependence being the big individual one) that I don’t think very many people had been calculating as costs because they never perceived a personal interest in doing so. Two, we are all in this thing together, despite the individualistic illusions all around us, fostered by our disjointed car culture, making us think otherwise. The suburbs and exurbs wouldn’t exist without the central cities and vast highways, and the central cities, their residents, and all surrounding ones are affected and indirectly connected in enormous ways by the ongoing sprawl, while most suburbanites and exurbanites can maintain happy illusions that they have no interest in or connection or obligation to the affairs of the central city or surrounding, connected areas; and I doubt they have very much to stake them to their own so-called communities either.

I’m not sure, though, what the ultimate and most reasonable/desirable solution(s) to all this really is in such a large and diverse country as the U.S. But I do think most people can make all kinds of small adjustments for the better right now. And it is in almost everyone’s interest to not only have cleaner, more efficient automobiles and energy and a cleaner environment; but also to have more efficient living locations; shorter commutes; reliable, far-reaching public transit; good, long-term planning/development; and logically/efficiently laid out and tangibly interconnected communities. The more we realize these things and acknowledge our connectedness, inevitable codependency, mutual interests and long-term communal goals, the better.

On the other hand, the “solution” of more drilling (along with any other “solution” that misses the root issues), which really seems like little more than an attempt to provide a psychological justification for the continuation of a deceptively easy, individualistic and unsustainable car-dominated culture, is not really a solution at all. It will only perpetuate our root problems and likely leave us worse off than we were when we started.