Petroleum-based products are part of life

As the news begins its quarterly coverage of increasing gas prices, the argument often arises whether the United States and the industrialized world is addicted to oil. News stories often focus on the cost of gasoline at the gas station.
However, they rarely are able to grasp the scope of how deeply integrated petroleum-based products are in our everyday lives.
The moral of the story is this: Gas prices aren’t a sign to panic and tighten budgets. They are simply an indicator to one fraction or facet of life, and we must realize that oil has crept into nearly everything we touch.

The issue with gas prices isn’t that they “break the bank.” If you live in the South, there is no excuse to complain about the price of fuel. Compared to the West Coast and New England, prices here are nearly a third to half of that of other regions in the United States, and the South would not survive if fuel costs were as detrimental to Americans’ standards of living as some claim. Additionally, standard of living costs are significantly lower due to a warm climate that does not require as much heating. For those few cold weeks each year, an abundance of cheap natural gas keeps energy costs comparatively lower. Rarely do price fluctuations in fossil fuels fatally affect the lives of U.S. residents.

The real issue that needs to be explored is how much your life is surrounded by products made of petroleum. Oil often goes overseas to manufacturing facilities that realign and reshape the molecules of crude oil to create synthetics and polymers (nylon, polyester, Styrofoam, plastics, etc.) used in the everyday items we need. Even a car, which we often only see in terms of gasoline consumption and MPGs, is designed using plastics and synthetics for the bumpers, interiors, radio units and so on. Entire corporations are being built on oil but not in the conventional sense of ExxonMobil or BP. The technology industry’s blossoming success over the past two decades is not just due to its innovative creations. It’s due to its ability to realign carbon molecules from crude oil and petroleum into the alkenes and plastics that become the exterior to an Apple iPhone or the silicon-based motherboard of a Dell Inspiron PC.

Many who see this wonder what it would take to remove oil from the lives of the world’s people. Talk of a carbon-free world continues to penetrate public dialogue. As Indian activist Vandana Shiva notes in her work, “Soil Not Oil,” peak oil — the inevitable maximum rate of extraction of crude oil — will inevitably push us away from it or destroy life as we are used to. Arguably, humanity is at that point now.

Take an inventory of your living space and think about how many items are made from plastics and synthetics that are most likely petroleum-based, not even including items made using petroleum products in the process or to transport the items. The list will probably surprise you. Mine certainly did.

Daily Gamecock