Oil. It’s the nectar of the progress, the fireworks of the gods. Black gold, Texas tea as the ballad of Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies put it. It may be crude, like a fat uncle’s jokes, but it warms our hearts. It connects us all like a big bonfire. Well, at least, until some idiot starts throwing gas and tires on it and the cops come.
So now the Saudis are throwing cheap oil on the fire. It’s like mommy and daddy are fighting again, but like any child caught in the middle of something much bigger, there are silver linings. Cheap oil is our version of our divorcing parents taking us to McDonalds every weekend. So let’s enjoy this moment, however briefly, and try to forget that it is all out of our control and how destabilizing it all could be, and be thankful that we now have the money to buy an extra pack of smokes a week.
Oh yea, nearly forgot about the global warming, dying-planet thing.
Still, it’s nice not feeling like a have-not anymore. Finally we get to tilt our noses up at those petro-regimes: Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Alberta. Mind you, despite how nice it is that $40 fills up a tank, the fact of the matter, it’s still driving in New Brunswick. Road trip to Bathurst anyone? And if you’re driving in Saint John, you’re still going to spend $60 a week from driving over potholes.
But at least we’ll stop people from leaving. All those young foolhardy adults who left New Brunswick to go to Fort McMurray are flocking back here with their tails between their legs. And all they will have to console themselves is all the money they made out there, the invaluable work experience, the life long friends and memories they made, and the feeling they actually went and did something.
They’ll think twice next time.
And remember how heated the debate over shale gas and the Energy East pipeline was? Now the only thing that’s heating up is the planet.
See that’s the thing, the cheaper oil is, the more we burn, the less we invest in alternatives, like wind, solar, tidal and cow farts. We take off our sweaters, we warm up our cars for 20 minutes, we throw more gasoline on the fire. Cause it looks so cool. And makes us feel so dangerous.
Well, at least the environmentalists can claim they stopped the Keystone XL. And maybe even the one that’s supposed to come to Saint John. (Apparently some Albertans and family in Saint John would’ve made money off it. The drive-through province could have become the pump-through province.)
I think the only reasonable thing to do is find something else we can export from this province; things we’re good at. I suggest: poor bus schedules, Brian Gallant’s secret to a perfect smile, the ability to give directions using buildings that haven’t existed in 20 years, yetis, and the right to use the expression “smoking darts and breaking heart.” Also, up donair meat exports 3,000 per cent. We’ll be rich.
All of which might lead you to believe I’m missing the point. That I don’t have a unifying theory that will overcome our addiction to cheap oil and all the necessary things it enables like beauty products, cheese slices and McDonalds milkshakes.
Well try this:
The dinosaurs died and turned into oil, but when we’ve burned up all the oil, we too will die and turn into oil for future species to exploit and then die. It’s the great circle of life. I don’t know where the antelopes, lions and wildebeests fit into this whole analogy, but I’m sure they’re in there somewhere too.
