A Million Little Barrels

By Walter Kirn

It's an irresistible compulsion. Every time the price of gasoline jumps to a new high, I, as well as countless other journalists, serve up a standard list of burning questions that we've kept warm on the hot plate since the last spike. Will the country finally get serious about conservation? Will Detroit go full-tilt producing hybrid cars? Will commuters stay home and work over the Web? And last, this, the big one: What will it take for oil-drunk Americans to finally learn their lesson and sober up? (With its talk about gas-tax holidays and $100 rebates, Congress seems to be answering, Free drinks.)

It's exhausting, this ritual self-interrogation. And then, after all the familiar articles have been written, the cycle starts up again, turning over like the big V-8 in that wasteful sedan we never sold. Gas prices start sliding down again and people go back to driving as they've always driven while listening to the same music on their stereos and tuning out the same discouraging news about global warming, Middle East politics and bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstates. Crank the Pearl Jam. Can the NPR.

Perhaps that's why, this time, I won't be disappointed if gas prices stay uncomfortably high. Then I might finally be able to adapt to them. I might relinquish, at last, my selfish fantasy of buying a 300-h.p. sports sedan that uses only premium. I might break myself of the obsessive road-trip habit that caused me to put over 90,000 miles on a new SUV in just the past two years. I might trade in the SUV for a mountain bike and lower my blood pressure as a wholesome side effect.

But because what shoots up seems always to drift back down, I postpone such long-term decisions for quick fixes that allow me to linger in denial. My best trick so far is to set a dollar limit every time I open my gas cap. The idea is always to spend the same amount--$50, say--and drive as far as I can on what it buys me, even if it's not as far as yesterday. That gambit works well for a week or two, I find, but then it gradually stops working because of the same sort of sloppy mental accounting that prompts me twice a year to cancel my HBO subscription while simultaneously buying more cell-phone minutes.

My second best trick, which I'm trying at the moment, is to make room for gas in my general household budget by living as if it were 10 years ago, when fuel was relatively inexpensive and my personal consumption habits were too. I drank my water from the tap back then, not from bottles brought on ships from Iceland, and I let my cell phone ring however it wanted to rather than paying for special tones. Perhaps by returning to older, simpler ways I'll find the extra 11 bucks I need now to fill my tank past the three-quarters point.

As soon as prices drop again, of course, I know that I'll stop playing my futile games and do as alcoholics do when they pick up the vodka bottle after an interval of sobriety: guzzle all the unleaded I can pump. It might be my final opportunity before the Saudi royal family announces that it's relocating to Malibu because its nation's wells are all tapped out. Drive 55 m.p.h. again? That's fine for optimists, but pessimists zoom full throttle toward the catastrophe that they have given up trying to forestall. It's a dangerous attitude, but it's exhilarating. Call it NASCAR conservation.

As binge drinkers and yo-yo dieters know, making and then breaking resolutions eventually devastates the mind and body. That's the point I've reached with gas prices. Nothing I read on the topic seems believable, and none of the old economic ideas seem applicable. For all I know, when oil truly runs short, the price of fuel will plunge and plunge until there are only 20 gallons left, which no one will want, so they'll pour them on the ground.

Why not be perfectly honest? I'm losing hope. In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush asserted that America is "addicted" to fossil fuel. Because Bush has also been candid about having been hooked on booze once, he surely knew that admission represented only the first step in the classic 12-step program of recovery: "We admitted that we were powerless over gasoline, that our lives had become unmanageable." The next few steps are trickier, however, because they require surrendering the compulsion to an entity greater than the self--a so-called higher power.

But what in heaven would that be? Concern for the environment? A desire for independence from OPEC? We've already appealed to those gods, and many others, but they haven't proved strong enough to help us. We've struck self-serving bargains with all of them. And that's why, tomorrow, I'll be on the road, setting out on an 800-mile drive. It's not a trip I need to take, but it's one that I feel helpless not to take. Even if we choose to drill in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, turn the whole state of Iowa to ethanol and dismantle ExxonMobil into a thousand family-owned companies with names like Ron and Donna's Petroleum, I fear that I might never get the chance again.