"Oil Is Dumb"

That was the message on the bumper sticker pasted on the car in front of me.

Of course, it is doubtful that said car was being driven by an electrical engineer or physicist who had somehow conquered the myriad issues revolving around battery technology or low cost harnessing of earth or space forces.  

 

More likely, it was driven by some under-educated fundamentalist thinker of some sort.  

 

In any case, it crossed my mind that it is a sure bet that they buy more of the dumb product I find and sell than I buy of the presumably smart product they sell.  Furthermore, I bet that nearly evryone needs and value what I make and sell more than they value what they make and sell.

 

I mean, I wouldn't be dickish enough to put a bumper sticker on my car that reads "Pottery is Dumb".

Comments

[fred mrozek]

I mean, I wouldn't be dickish enough to put a bumper sticker on my car that reads "Pottery is Dumb".

Anyone who values their marriage would avoid that bumper sticker. I learned that lesson over wicker. (sort of)

[Scott]

Got dumb? Top this one: “Drive 70 and freeze a Yankee”. Remember that bumper sticker that was on about half the cars in Houston in the late 70’s when the speed limit was lowered to 55? Texas was prospering as the rest on the nation was getting killed over high energy prices. That bumper sticker, the TV show Dallas and the general arrogance a bravado of Texas oil men serioulsy damaged the image of our industry with a large portion of America.

Choke, I know you are a movie buff, so let me recommend a movie that is a sleeper, but also drives home the point made in the paragraph above. I give the move a B+, but clearly our tastes differ on such things.

The movie is The Grifters, directed by Marin Scorsese, starring John Cusack and Annette Benning. The plot revolves around a mother / son con man game. In one scene the mom calls the son, excited to tell him she has identified some marks, which are nouveau riche oil men. Mother con tells son con…”these oil guys have tons of cash and they are easy marks. Everybody in the oil business is making money right now, but these guys think they are making it because they are smart” This really gets the son con man fired up. Made me laugh and I never forgot it.

[Chuck Michelson]

Choke,

I'm the maker of the Oil is Dumb bumper sticker you saw, so I can comment and say more about what it means.

Oil is Dumb is a shorthand way of saying "The way we choose to use oil is dumb, and results in systems that don't make sense, from an ecological perspective or an efficiency perspective." But that is a bit much for a bumper sticker.

Make no mistake about it, you are right: the car that person was driving almost certainly runs on gasoline, and the bumper sticker is made of plastic. However, it's not very likely that the person was under-educated or a fundamentalist hippie or treehugger, so to speak. My customers are generally well-educated, and have jobs and interests that are not limited to environmental concerns.

I'll give you an example of what I mean with my message. Because oil has been historically an incredible bargain as an energy source, it's abundance has allowed us to set up systems that do not make sense. Here's just one example. Did you know that it takes more calories of energy to produce our food than are in the food itself? This means that our food system is a net energy loss. Which is of course unsustainable for any appreciable length of time. How could it be that we would put more energy into a system than we get out of it, when the whole purpose of the food system is as a source of energy? The reason this is possible is because of oil. Oil has provided us with the fertilizer to grow, the fuel to transport, and the plastic to package the food we eat. And it has allowed us to do so in an incredibly wasteful, ludicrously inefficient way. (The net energy loss in our food system is not small either - for many foods it can be, calorie for calorie, a loss of more than 100 to 1 (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008)).

This in itself does not make oil dumb. The way we use it is dumb, our systems our dumb, and the fact that we rely on it so heavily for our very survival, is dumb. Our oil will eventually run out. And when that happens we are going to have a big problem feeding our population. My message is about the system we use, and oil is a big part of that system.

My company promotes energy conservation, as a less dumb way to deal with our resources. I do this by paying people money to live greener, through a series of monthly challenges called No-Brainers. For example, this month I am paying customers $5 to cancel their junk mail, and giving them step by step instructions for how to do it. This saves lots of oil, electricity, and water, plus keeps a lot of waste out of the landfill. People generally don't like their direct advertising mail, so it is good for them, good for the environment, and good for my company.

Economists have been telling us for years that conservation is the cheapest way to produce new energy. But no one has put this idea to the test on the free market, before us. I am happy to say with my unique challenges, I have been "purchasing" gasoline from my customers at cheaper than the going rate for gasoline, and I've been "purchasing" electricity at a rate cheaper than solar. I do so while saving them money, reducing our collective waste of resources, and reducing the amount of smog, noise, and harmful byproducts that result from our over-combustion of gasoline in the streets all day every day. And finally, everyone involved enjoys doing it and has a good time.

I would like to tell you more about what we're doing, and how we are a truly unique new company, with a new approach to conservation, making people happy, and a financially sound business model, but for now I invite you to visit my website, at www.oilisdumb.com.

Chuck Michelson
Founder, Oil is Dumb
www.oilisdumb.com