Hooray For High Oil Prices,  Some Environmentalists Say

In case you live in the remote Nepalese mountains and don't get out much, the price of gas has gone up, along with just about everything from pears to postage stamps. Most vehicle owners go through a mourning process every time they visit the pumps. But, there is a group that has some members rejoicing over the high price of oil - the environmentalists.

Automobile companies have long had the technology to make more fuel efficient cars, but they did not have the market. New technology = expensive, and car buyers were not willing to go out en masse and purchase pricey new autos even to get 50-60 miles per gallon. Why buy the nifty Japanese hybrid when gas is so cheap?

Now though, with gas costing 4x as much as it did six years ago, many commuters are wondering, "Tell me again why we don't we have cars running on solar power?" Enter the happy environmentalists. Finally! Finally Americans are demanding cars that get good mileage, and those cars will produce fewer emissions! Finally there is a chance that the California Hydrogen Highway will be built, and people who own fuel cell cars will have places to fill up on hydrogen!

The environmentalists do have a point. Necessity is the mother of invention, and now that we are feeling the need, a stream of better-mileage cars are on the way. Every car manufacturer seems to be pumping out a hybrid or two. These are a big improvement on the straight electrical cars of a few years back, which had to be plugged in every 150 miles. They use a combination of a gasoline engine along with an electrical system that can recharge itself. You can now even find – ironically - environmentally friendly hybrid SUVs that get over 30 mpg.

As soon as there are plenty of filling stations offering pure hydrogen, the fuel cell cars look to be promising as well. These are the most environmentally friendly of all. They use no oil. They produce no C02 emissions. Their main byproduct is water.

The production of better mileage cars is a good thing. Not only should these innovations help our wallets when we fill up, and not only will they be better for the environment, but they have hopeful national security implications. The less we depend on oil for transportation, the less we'll depend on other nations to sell it to us. The less we depend on other - sometimes hostile - countries to sell us oil, the better for our national security. As China and India consume more oil, and the international demand for black gold squeezes on the supply, the cost of oil is not going to go down. But, we can lessen our need for it.

However, the environmentalists, while they hop up and down, have been a part of the problem we now face. We might not be in as dangerous an economic and national security situation if we were able to produce and refine more oil at home. In 1995, President Clinton vetoed a budget that included a provision for drilling in ANWR, where an estimated 8 billion barrels of oil are waiting to be recovered. If the process for drilling in ANWR had been started back in 1995, we would be enjoying an average of around 700,000 barrels of oil per day from that region. Offshore drilling has been nipped significantly. No new refineries were built in the United States for over 30 years, and efforts to get new ones built have been like pulling teeth. Even if we drill the oil, without enough refineries to turn the crude oil into something we can use, we're still sunk.

While it is good to lessen our dependence on oil, the world will not run on solar panels and windmills tomorrow. We need to be good stewards of the land and resources that God has put in our charge, but even more, we need to remember that human beings are affected by all these earthly, economic and political problems. It is good to care for the environment, but it should never be worshipped, and it should never be treated as more important than human beings for whom Jesus Christ died. As oil prices soar, causing the prices of everything else to soar, families are finding it harder to put food on their tables and to pay all their bills. It's not a time to dance in the streets.

But, it is a time to thank God for His constant provision in our lives, and for His faithfulness to us. It's also a time to be grateful that God made man in His image, and with that came the ability to create and invent. May those creative geniuses out there put all the gas-free cars and trucks on the road they can. We'll drive them, and maybe we’ll get past this troublesome dependence on oil. Either way, may we never get past our dependence on God our Father, the Creator of us, of oil, and of the environment too.
 

Related Links: