Conserve oil — a little sacrifice won’t kill us

Energy guru Amory Lovins cites a fascinating fact about America’s love affair with cars: Only 1 percent of the energy in each gallon of gasoline is used to move passengers forward. We lose the rest to inefficiencies and waste involved in propelling 5,000 pounds of rubber and metal.

There are much more energy-efficient, albeit less convenient, ways to get from Point A to Point B. Much cleaner ways, too. For those who don’t live in rural areas or depend on vehicles for their livelihood, there’s ride-sharing, mass transit, bicycles and increasingly affordable electric and hybrid cars.

Those who won’t leave home without their cars are riding the supply and demand roller coaster again. Car use is returning to pre-pandemic levels, Hurricane Ida shut down oil drilling and refining last fall, overseas production is modest, domestic stockpiles are low and the global oil market control prices — not President Joe Biden. Gas prices are expected to go even higher because we’ve stopped buying oil from Russia.

Biden chose to address the supply-side by encouraging more oil production. He resisted the ban on Russian oil but conceded when nearly 80 percent of the American people said they wanted it, along with members of Congress from both political parties. Voters should remember that as they listen to the gas pump dinging this summer.

The other way car owners can deal with high prices is to use less gas. Besides saving money, there are a multitude of local and national benefits: cleaner air, fewer lung diseases, greater energy independence and fewer of the emissions that cause climate change. Individuals can adopt 10 fuel-saving tips promoted by the International Energy Agency (IEA). If everybody used them, the tips would replace the oil that would be withheld from markets by boycotting Russian petroleum, the IEA says.

The Senate should do its part by passing the Build Back Better bill, which contains a $12,500 tax credit for buying American-made electric vehicles.

As Biden knows, his supply-side solution would be a step backward in America’s plans to fight climate change by switching to carbon-free fuels. But the demand-side alternative has downsides, too. One pollster warned Biden could pay a political price for suggesting we all save gas. Why? Because so many Americans don’t want to be inconvenienced. They would consider it another government imposition on their freedom.

Lee Maringoff at the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion advises, “People are becoming turned off to the whole notion of masks, so the message of personal sacrifice — having to alter their behavior in some way — gets into a freedom discussion that the White House doesn’t want to generate right now.”

Maybe we should have that discussion anyway. Biden has more than enough on his plate, but there’s a group of 19 million Americans could remind anti-maskers that actual blood sacrifices over the last 250 years won and protected their freedom. That’s the number of living veterans from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Post-Gulf War and peacetime service in the military. They are likely to consider mask mandates and gas conservation to be pretty easy and easily justified sacrifices.

Besides, freedom is not absolute. It comes with a social contract defined as an “implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example, by sacrificing some individual freedom” to protect the collective well-being.

We have decided with good reason to extend that contract to other freedom-loving nations like those in NATO, and now Ukraine. Anti-maskers are right to guard their freedom jealously, but not selfishly.

So, rally us to save oil, Mr. President. Damn the torpedoes. Conserving gas won’t kill us. Besides, riding the bus will give us more time to pray for the people of Ukraine. Many of our countrymen and women have paid for our freedom with their lives. Now, tragically, Ukrainians are having to sacrifice their lives in the hope their children and countrymen will have freedom, too.   

William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director who administered energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies programs, and he also served as special assistant to the department’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Becker is also executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House as well as House and Senate committees on climate and energy policies. The project is not affiliated with the White House.