Yes...but!

July 28 2008

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-38

What’s the value of a human life? Is it worth a barrel of oil? A hundred barrels? What’s the true price of a litre of gasoline that now sells for, say, $1.30? Should it be a lot less, because several arms of government tax the stuff quite heavily?

Well, I tell you, even at $10.00 per litter it is a bargain when all the extras are added. Actually, the ultimate dollar amount of the fuel we get when we say ‘fill’r up’ can never be accurately calculated.

I wrote in a recent column: “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth.” Indeed, the current cost of the carbohydrates we consume does not include the truth about our health related expense, nor does it account for the air – water - land and thermal pollution it causes. An average nuclear plant, for instance, heats the output water over 15 degrees higher than the incoming cooling water. Also what we pay now at the pump does not reflect the reality to secure supplies. Both recent wars involving Iraq were all about oil. And, last, but not least the cost of Global Warming and its weather related events – drought, hurricanes - is not entered on the balance sheet either.

Take sickness related dollars. If there is one budget item the Canadian Premiers fear – except perhaps Alberta’s – is the ever growing share of tax moneys going to doctors, hospitals and long-term-care. By now it’s clear that many of our body problems originate in the soil, air and water, contaminated as they are by the emissions from combustion engines and power plants which invade us through what we eat, drink and inhale.

One of the laws of Ecology is that “Nothing disappears”: the carbon ingredients – all poisonous – end up in our intestines, creating deadly havoc there. Fossil fuel contains huge amounts and different types of particulates, including dust, soot, smoke and other very fine suspended matter, much of which is invisible. These irritants may not right away affect adults, but they have immediate and lasting effects on children with their still developing respiratory and immune systems. Asthma cases alone have increased 160% over the past 15 years.

All this should be added to the cost at the pump. I am sure that somebody at Queen’s Park can calculate the percentage for health care caused by automobile use, including cost of policing, injuries and deaths.

Beijing will be in the news for a while. Only half the cars are allowed on its streets for the next 2 months or so, because otherwise it’s “unsafe” to breathe the air for those who participate in the Olympics there. Even then they’ll exceed Los Angeles at its worst. Also in China’s capital 1,000 new cars are added each day.

Some of the oil we use comes from the Alberta Tar Sands, the most dangerous oil produced on the planet. It’s called a synthetic fuel –often abbreviated to syn-fuel. It’s indeed the most sin-full stuff humans create, together with uranium-derived nuclear material.

Gasoline transportation often causes oil spills, while fossil fuel based fertilizers leak into the ground water, and strip mining destroys the landscape. All these mishaps come back to us in added clean-up costs, in poisoning local drinking water and in higher health taxes.

Gasoline use creates grave dangers for the world economy as well. The U.S. is spending approximately $1.75 Billion per day on imported oil, which is a huge drain on their economy, adds to their budget deficits, harms the overall economy, and leads to job losses and eventually higher taxes.

Our dependence on fuel has caused the Middle East wars, which is a major reason why the price of crude has increased so rapidly. Another factor is the hundreds of millions of people in India and China who are becoming middle class, and want new cars, larger homes, all involving expanding energy expense and much higher prices.

Oh, yes: Global Warming. It’s definite proof that our planet cannot support the current level of fossil fuel use, let alone more of it. ”Nature Knows Best” is another of the laws of Ecology. When we don’t heed the Laws of Ecology, the result, inevitably, is economic chaos, mass starvation and the end of our way of life, as we know it now.

Perhaps we should, each time we buckle up, whether in our car or a plane, say that well-known line from The Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts” especially the environmental debts we are passing on to our children and grandchildren, who pay for these debts with their lives.

That’s the steep price we pay for oil.