I BUY, THEREFORE I AM – by Donald Kaul

Did you see that the price of oil got up over $100-a-barrel the other day, before falling back a few cents?  If you didn’t, don’t worry about it; you’ll get another chance.  Soon.

While experts are predicting a near-term retreat from $100 oil---because we seem to be teetering on the edge of a recession---they also predict a surge to $120 or so in the summer when the driving season kicks in.

That’s a lot, $120-a-barrel.  It represents an all-time high and will translate into $3.75 at the pump.

There are those who will say, “Why doesn’t the President do something?”

And I will say back: “He did do something.  He gave us $100-a-barrel oil.” As recently as 2003 the price of a barrel was as low as $25.  That was before George Bush’s energy (ha-ha) program kicked in.  The good old days.

If, in 2001, you had laid out a plan to make oil cost $100-a-barrel by 2008, it would have been pretty much the plan that George Bush and his oil-field cronies executed.

First you fight all efforts---international and domestic---at energy conservation as though they were terrorist plots conceived in the mind of Osama bin Laden.

Then you go to war in the Middle East not once but twice to destabilize the world’s top oil-producing region and send oil prices shooting up.  It has been said that as much as 30 percent of the price we’re paying for oil is due to the risk of that instability.

You also make sure to propose a series of half-hearted, too-little-too-late measures to develop alternative fuels, just so you can say you’ve done something.

And, of course, you keep trying to go where Man has not gone before.  And drill for oil.  Wilderness preserves are especially good.  It is a pathetic response to the kind of shortfall we have in oil production, but it would make a few billion bucks for your oil industry buddies (the ones writing the big checks for speeches when your time in office is done).

Anyway, it’s worked.  Congratulations George.  And congratulations too to the American people, nearly half of whom voted Mr. Bush into office---twice.  (If this is democracy I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to spread it to the rest of the world.)

The sorry fact is that advocating real energy conservation is a form of political suicide.  People embrace conservation in the abstract, but when you get down to details, where it becomes painful and expensive, they act as though you’re trying to take away their birthright.  And, in a sense, you are.

To the average American, conservation of energy is un-American.  Our economy is based on consumption.  Less is not more, less is less and bigger is better.

Consider the television set.  It arrived in the world with the promise of being the greatest educational tool since the book.  And instead we made it the greatest sales tool in the history of the world.

Think on that.  A machine that can bring the entire world into your living room and instead we turn it over to lying hucksters selling junk.

The American public has swallowed the absurd notion that they are defined by the things they buy and consume.  Happiness consists of owning the right combination of cars, hair products, clothes and soap.

They’ve bought the lie that they are consumers before they are workers.  That’s why the labor movement is dying.  Unions make things cost more.  They protect jobs too, but we don’t think about that until it’s too late.

So to ask a society like ours to conserve, to do with less, not to buy, is ridiculous.   I buy, therefore I am.

That’s why ideas like the $2-a-gallon gas tax will never fly.  People don’t want to use less gasoline.  They want to use more.

Which means, whether they know it or not, they want $120-a-barrel oil.

And they’re going to get it; good and hard.