In any event, the former is far worse for society than the latter. Old-line English cuisine resulted merely in bland, marginally palatable meals. Overdependence on oil has embrittled global security and dumped a load of carbon into the atmosphere that puts modern human society at risk.

A new book, “Freedom From Oil,” lays out an action plan for lowering oil dependence. It is written as a series of memos from Cabinet secretaries to a future president, and the book culminates with a presidential speech to a joint session of Congress declaring reduction in oil dependence to be a high national priority.

Much of what the book recommends has been proposed before – higher motor vehicle fuel efficiency standards, incentives for commercializing plug-in hybrid vehicles and cellulosic ethanol, a huge federal research program under a catchy title. (Instead of calling it the new “Manhattan” or “Apollo” project, the author, David Sandalow of the Brookings Institution, suggests the “Reynolds Project,” named after a town in Indiana that is trying to shift all of its energy consumption to renewable resources.)

The book's exploration of the issue as a series of memos and as a presidential speech illuminates far better than a dry policy tome the political and policy ramifications of any serious program aimed at weaning America off its dependence on oil.

What the book most clearly explains, however, is so obvious that it’s hidden in plain sight: We depend heavily on oil because there is no practical substitute. We know there are cleaner, more secure fuel sources for moving people and goods. There are many ways to propel a car forward. For many political, historical, and economic reasons, however, our society is locked into a market that supplies only one fuel in sufficient quantities to provide the transportation services that a modern industrial civilization must have.

Which brings us back to English cooking. Why, when other European cultures have produced an astonishing and pleasing array of gastronomic wonders – fettucini alfredo, duck a’l’orange, German potato salad, and many more – is traditional English cooking the butt of jokes among foodies?

A plausible explanation, described in an amusing commentary by economist Paul Krugman, is England’s rapid industrialization. As people moved off the land to work in the mills, feeding the urban masses necessitated a supply chain from farm to market, as it does today. But in those days, there was no overnight shipping or refrigeration. Of necessity, the city folk had to eat foods that would keep – canned goods, salted meats, and potatoes, for example.

Once Englishmen became used to such mediocre fare, the market settled down and delivered it, even after the advent of rapid transportation and refrigeration no longer made it necessary.

As Krugman noted: “The history of English food suggests that even on so basic a matter as eating, a free-market economy can get trapped for an extended period in a bad equilibrium in which good things are not demanded because they have never been supplied, and are not supplied because not enough people demand them.”

So it goes with automobiles. In the early years of the automobile, gasoline-fueled internal combustion was one of several candidates vying to be the drive technology of choice. Auto history buffs will recall the Stanley Steamer and the Wood’s Electric Phaeton.

In 1925, Henry Ford predicted that ethanol would be “the fuel of the future.” Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the heavy-duty engine that bears his name, believed that diesel fuel derived from vegetable oil had a promising future.

Oil, however, prevailed. Once the market settled on gasoline and petroleum diesel, the Stanley Steamers and Electric Phaetons disappeared and the U.S. transportation economy became tied to oil.

Like English cooking, the transportation market settled into a pattern that made no room for alternatives.

In “Freedom From Oil,” the president’s speech points out: “We grew up with this. So did our parents and grandparents. We consider it normal. But it is deeply abnormal.”

And as “Freedom From Oil” points out, the federal government used its considerable power to keep the oil flowing, which further shut out competing alternatives such as electric drives and biofuels. Oil companies received depletion allowances. Public lands were opened to drilling. Presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, nurtured an alliance with Saudi Arabia, where huge oil strikes in mid-century propelled that backwater tribal kingdom to the center of global influence.

Once U.S. oil production peaked in the early 1970s, Saudi Arabia emerged as the most important oil producing country in the world, with its unparalleled ability to influence price and supply behavior in an oil market that is now global.

Throughout most of the 20th century and now in the 21st, the Middle East has been a cockpit of intrigue, turmoil, and chronic violence, in part because of the region’s enormous oil reserves and its low costs of production.

Therein, of course, lies one of many problems with oil dependence. U.S. foreign policy is driven – distorted, many critics would say – by the dependence of the U.S. and other industrial nations on oil production controlled by regimes that have little use for Western values of liberty and equality.

Because the oil market is global and oil is a fungible commodity, any disruption in that market anywhere in the world will show up as higher prices at home. That's a dangerous vulnerability. Where we get the oil we use is less important than the quantity that we use.

Oil has carried environmental baggage for years – spills, air pollution, and land gobbled by sprawling land use patterns predicated on never-ending supplies of cheap fuel for auto-dependent communities.

Now that scientists have largely concluded that climate change is driven by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the environmental footprint of oil dependence has expanded to an ominous degree.

Breaking that dependence means breaking oil’s stranglehold on the transportation market and encouraging the development of competing technologies – electric drives, biofuels, better urban transit services, and, perhaps several decades from now, hydrogen. With a greater diversity of transportation choices, oil will not cast as large a shadow over our economy, security, and environment as it does today.

The strategies recommended by “Freedom From Oil” are promising, but strong federal leadership will be necessary. The politics will be treacherous and charting a productive way forward will require sustained public pressure and sustained political courage.

The lesson of English cuisine offers a fanciful ray of hope that a sub-optimal market can readjust dramatically. Once travel and exposure to immigrant cultures gave the Brits a taste of better food, they started asking for it. The market supplied the demand and offered more choices. You can still order a plate of bangers and mash if that’s what you want, but today, there’s a lot more on the menu in the U.K.

For food, a diversity of choices is a good thing. For energy, it’s essential. That’s the important lesson that “Freedom From Oil” teaches.



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