S*cks to Be Me (#4): Fire and Ice

Okay, so as you’ll recall, I’m doing a massive and tedious overview of the fun things that happened to me over the last couple of months of 2008. I know you’re enjoying it. I can tell by the way that your eyes are going glassy. And that expression that says, “Please kill me.” And, ‘course, the snoring. Ah, the joys of charisma.

Where was I? Oh, right. My trials and tribulations. So, to date, I’ve covered the Flying Eye From Planet Zork, the demonically possessed Academic Committee, and the Dishwasher that hated me. Last week, I’d just left off with the discovery that our furnace needed to be repaired. Or else we’d all freeze to death. And Giant Killer Polar Penguins would show up in the living room. And eat us. And nobody wants that. It would make them sick. And heaven knows they’ve suffered enough. Global Warming and all that.

Right… the furnace.


*

A few words about the furnace.

We need one. We live in the greater Boston area. While it is true that Boston doesn’t get as cold as, say, Bismarck or the Ross Ice Shelf or the typical response to my attempts at dating when I was single (six of one, thirty-seven of the other), it can still get pretty durn chilly.

Now, we have something called “oil heat.” This means that once a month or so a big truck shows up outside our house, sticks a hose into the basement, and fills up this huge tank. Oh, and then another hose attaches to our bank accounts and does something similar but in reverse.

I’d never even seen oil heat before I moved East from New Mexico, ‘lo these many moons ago. It seemed kinda primitive. Like having coal. And steam engines. And a neighbor named Barney Rubble. But, everyone assures me I’m wrong. They lean back on their rocks, pick their teeth with mastodon bones, scratch themselves under their loin cloths, and explain patiently that I just don’t understand because I’m a Hick from way out West where no one can talk intelligently about Art and Culture.

*

A few more words.

Every time the oil truck pulls up outside our house, I get pissed. Big time.

This isn’t just because it’s expensive (though God knows it’s that), and not because the oil smells, and not just because I know we’re sitting with a basement chock ‘o block full of a highly flammable material.

I’m pissed because we don’t have to be here. And by “We” I mean everyone.

You see, let’s face it, one of the biggest contributors to the current Recession (I’m writing this in 2009) is the cost of energy.

Oh, yes, there are lots of other factors. There was the Bush II administration, which was an economic disaster. And, there’s the war in Iraq, which in retrospect now appears to be about the dumbest sh*t thing done by an American government since Prohibition. And there’s the fact that two of our fearless leaders, Bush 2nd and Reagan 1st, tried to fund the government by means of deficit spending on a titanic scale and pretty much put us in the poor house at the same time.

AND there’s the fact that everyone got Ayn Randy over the last few decades and deregulated everything so that bankers in their vast wisdom could burn-through billions in lousy investments and really snazzy lifestyles.

But, come right down to it, the fact that gas hit four bucks a gallon and was headin’ toward five … THAT did us really serious harm. Maybe more than everything combined.

And the funny, scary thing is that I don’t hear anyone talking about that. I hear words about stimulus packages and nationalizing banks and dropping a few car execs outta their own DELETED private planes…but not energy.

Which is really serious because the hard, nasty fact of the matter is that no matter how much money gets thrown at what, no matter how many Democratic Congressmen pose majestically in front of Cspan cameras, no matter how many Republican governors announce that they won’t take any Federal money because they’re just too damn moral…

We’re not going to get back to the kind of standards of living we once knew until we get energy prices back down to where they were in the 1960s


*


Oh, and if you’re wondering, the reason we’ve got high energy prices…?

Well, yes, there’s been gouging. Oil companies haven’t exactly gone out of their way to limit their profits to the merely fabulous (as opposed to the frankly obscene). And there’s been competition from new economies like China and India.

BUT, the biggest single reason for our problems has nothing to do with Conspiracies at Halliburton, or price fixing by OPEC, or even wars in the Middle East…

It has to do with the pure, simple, inescapable fact that we’ve pumped most of the oil out of the ground that we can get.

And it ain’t coming back.


*

Okay, more on that in a moment. First, let me tell the story about the furnace. So, when we bought our house ‘bout fifteen years ago, there was of course an oil heat burner already in it. It’s a hot water system. That means that an oil fuel flame heats up water and sends it both into our radiators and to our faucets.

Now, from the day we moved in, we noticed that we didn’t exactly have scads of the stuff coming out the taps. Martha and David, both of whom kinda like cold water, didn’t mind much. But, me . . . well, remember, I grew up in a desert. For me, showers in this hosue were a continuous opportunity to practice those operatic screams that usually accompany testicular compression. Which, come to think about it, also happens to me when the water’s cold enough. But that’s another story. For another day. When I feel strong.

But, with the passing of years, the water began to get colder and colder. Finally, even Martha and David began to complain—which is saying something since either one of them could go nude bungee jumping off an ice flow. Not that they would, you understand. But, they could. You know. If it were required or something. Say, to save humanity from invading aliens. Which never happens. But it’s comforting to know we’ve got the option.

So, anyway, I decided to look into getting a new furnace. At the time, we had an oil contract and a service contract with a certain company—let’s call it Grifter, Angle, and Scam (GAS) Ltd.

I went to them and said, “Hey, what does a new furnace cost?” They responded, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” I said, “Come on, how bad it can be?” They said, “Ha, ha, and double ha. You don’t wanna know.” I said, “Sure I do. I’m tough. I can take it.” They said, “Well, okay, but remember, you asked for it.” And then they gave me a number.

Think the GNP of Guatemala. Then add a couple of zeros. And I’m not talking on the front end. I’m talking on the back. And on the wrong side of the decimal point to boot.

I turned a whiter shade of pale (not an easy thing) and went off looking for second and third (and fourth) estimates. Finally, I found a local plumbing company that offered a wee bit lower price than all the others. So, I gave ‘em the go-ahead and the next thing I knew we had a basement full of guys who were all sweating and swearing and doing faintly mysterious things with screwdrivers. And then, the next day, they all went away again leaving behind a brand new furnace and a very large bill.

Okay, I thought, well, at least that’s over. Everything will be fine. It’s got to get better.

Right? Right?


*

Two years go past. The local plumbing company that had installed our furnace . . . disappears.

And, one morning, last year, a little after Thanksgiving, we noticed …

It was cold.

Really cold.

And no matter how much we turned up the heat, it never got much warmer.


*

Okay, now getting back to why I’m mad.

We’re out of oil. Or, at least, we’re out of oil that’s easy and cheap to get. We plowed through it like alcoholics in a liquor store and now we’ve got the hangover we damn well deserve.

The kicker? The thing which is really, Really, REALLY infuriating? We don’t have to be in the situation.

We’ve known this day was coming. Forty years ago, we were talking about it. In 1968…that is, nineteen-sixty-freaking-EIGHT … we were talking about it.

Five years later, in 1973, the Arab world clamped down on oil exports, and Richard Milhous Nixon . . . that’s right, Tricky Dicky… launched “Project Independence,” which was supposed to free of us of dependence on foreign oil. And, you know what? It could have worked. But, then the Arab world relented on the oil exports, the Nixon administration got Watergated, and the whole thing ended with a whimper.

But we STILL could have pulled it out. In 1979, yet got yet another massive oil crisis. Jimmy Carter (remember him?) launched yet another attempt at energy independence. He called for massive investments, both public and private, into synfuel (i.e., oil substitutes made out of coal and other relatively plentiful carbon fuels).

Except, once again everything came to naught. OPEC lowered oil prices a notch and, worse, Reaganomics was on the horizon. All The People Who Knew Best announced that synfuel was uneconomical. Carter got kicked out of the White House and we happily went back to buying things we couldn’t afford with maxed-out credit cards while the President from Hollywood nodded off in the corner.

*

But, the point is, we KNEW this day was coming. We KNEW what was going to happen. It was no surprise to anyone.

But we did nothing…NOTHING…about it.

We could have used those forty years since ’68 preparing. We could have been developing new technologies, making our machines more efficient, building synfuel plants…

But we didn’t. We just assumed that since there had always been cheap energy before, there would always be cheap energy again.

And now . . .


*

Oh, and by the way, if you’re looking for villains in this story, there’s plenty ‘em to go around. And not just on the Right and in Big Business.

Sure, the Right and Big Biz have quite a lot to answer for. Conservatives were busily claiming there wasn’t an Energy Crisis (“we’ve always found more oil before”) right up to the day the pumps went to $5 a pop. They’ll probably be saying the same when those pumps go completely dry.

And Business…? Well, good old Detroit was making Behemoth Petrol Pigs when the whole damn world wanted smaller, fuel-efficient cars. And the big auto companies refused to do anything different even when they were nose to nose with death everlasting. (I’ve heard that once, when a group of experts confronted some Detroit executives on the fact that neither the market nor energy efficiency favored big cars, the execs said “Americans will buy whatever car we care to market.”)

But let’s not forget the Left. Let’s not forget all the Greenie-Weenies who opposed every technical innovation in energy production—quite literally from nuclear to windmills—but who have demanded that their standards of living (not necessarily ours, but theirs) remain exactly as they are.

This is known, in case you’re wondering, as being a Goddamned fool.

*

Okay, but getting back to my furnace…

So, last week, I told you all about how I finally called the furnace repair guy. We gave up on GAS Ltd. a long time ago. We’ve got a new oil company, the folks there actually seem trustworthy.

The repair guy shows up a couple of hours later. I walk with him downstairs and explain the problem. “Doesn’t sound too bad,” he says as we enter the back room where the heater is. He takes one look at it.

“Eeek,” he says.

“Eeek?” I ask.

“OhmyGod,” he adds.

“Ah,” I answer, wittily.

“You put this in yourself, didn’t you,” he says.

“Ah, no.”

“You had an uncle do it. Or a cousin. A crossed-eyed inbred albino cousin who watches cannibal movies a lot.”

“No…”

“Then who DID put it in?”

I told him the name of the plumber.

“Really? I didn’t even know he was out of jail yet.”

“Argh,” I say.


*

Make a long story short, the furnace had been misinstalled. In fact, at least according to the repair guy, it may not even have been legal. Certainly, it wasn’t up to code.

And, once more, there was a bill involved. A large bill. A breath-taking bill. The kind of bill that you don’t take home to meet mom. Because she might have a heart attack.

But, at least, now we’ve got hot water. And I don’t scream so much while taking showers. It confuses the dog. He thought plumbing just sounded like that. I’ve considered investing in a couple of army surplus air raid sirens and firing ‘em off now and then. Just to, you know, reassure him.



*


One last rant for the day, and then I promise I’ll quit.

To repeat, forty years ago . . . forty DELETED years ago . . . we could have addressed this problem. We could have made the investments, built the infrastructure, and perfected the technologies that would have kept energy costs cheap for centuries to come.

But, we didn’t. And, now, the day of reckoning is at hand.

We’re going to have to work really hard to get back to where we were. We’re going to have invest in whole new ways of producing energy. By that, I don’t mean just solar, wind, and tides . . . or any of the other trendy things that are supposed to be so green and friendly. I mean things like controlled thermonuclear fusion, or, failing that, lots of nuclear reactors. No kidding. Safer nukes, but nukes all the same.

Moreover, at least in the short run (and quite likely in the medium) we’re going to have to do some really distasteful things—like burn more coal, mine “oil shale” deposits, and exploit “tar sands.” (Look ‘em up if you’re interested.)

None of this is going to be fun.

The kicker? Once again to repeat myself, I hear no one saying any of this. I hear no one telling the world exactly what’s going to happen, and why. I hear no one saying what needs to be said. And doing it honestly.

Which makes me worry. A lot.

*

But, anyway . . . back to the furnace.

So, there we were. After the Flying Eye, the Academics With Their Heads Up Their Astrolabes, and The Dishwasher from Hell, we’d had the Heater That Didn’t Heat.

But, now, I said to myself, everything was Fixed. Now, I added, Everything Will Get Back to Normal. Now, I concluded, Things Will Be Just Ducky.

That’s what I said to myself.

Gosh. Golly. Gee. Wiz.

I say the darndest things sometimes.

Which is code for “Really, Really, REALLY Stupid.”


*

Next time, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls of all ages . . . we’ll have yet another little tale of my happy adventures in 2008.

It’s entitled “I’m dreaming of a damp Christmas. In a Swamp. Just before the Blizzard.”

Loads of fun.

So, don’t touch that dial…

Onward and upward.

















Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker