I think I first heard about "The Carburetor" in the 1960s. Or possibly it was about 1973 during the Arab oil embargo (just after I bought a new Ford Gran Torino station wagon with fuel efficiency of 12 mpg downhill with a tailwind). For the benefit of the younger readers, The Carburetor story is now a classic urban legend that goes something like this:
A man invents a new carburetor. He goes to the Big Auto makers and offers to sell it to them so they can make more fuel-efficient cars. It will easily get 150 mpg, even on the big land barges being produced in Detroit.
This would be good for the honest, hard-working, patriotic, bread-winning, backbone little people of America, so Big Auto then, in collusion with Big Oil, buys the invention. However, these two gangs of evil-doers lock the invention away in a vault, never to be seen again. The price of oil goes up, and cars get less fuel-efficient instead of more fuel-efficient.
As usual, according to the tale, the little guy gets screwed, and Big Oil Inc. makes more money.
We have heard the story for years and grinned at the gullibility of people who passed it on. The story was too ridiculous to even take seriously.
It won't die
I was floored then, when recently on a Saturday morning at the local barber shop another customer began complaining about gasoline prices (which had just hit about $1.55/gal). He began talking about a friend of his who had a cousin in California who actually knew the guy who invented The Carburetor. This, of course, gave our speaker all the credibility he needed! (Knowing the source is far better than just stating, "I heard somewhere that....") He started rattling off the same old story. And of course he could speak authoritatively, because his friend had a cousin in California....
How do you answer someone like that?
I listened while the conversation continued on to the war in Iraq and how it was being waged solely for the oil. The greedy oil companies were again at work driving up the price of gasoline.
I mentioned that possibly something related to supply and demand might have something to do with prices.
"And maybe the situations in Nigeria and Venezuela might be at work here," I added.
The answer, basically, was: "What do they have to do with anything? The oil companies are out to screw us whenever they can!"
Conspiracies and victims
Some people believe there is a conspiracy underlying just about everything. That's especially true for "Big Business" and "Big Government."
Recently I was talking to an Indonesian biologist in town to do research on earthworms and composting. He thinks it is a clever trick of the US to drag its feet on resource development in the Arctic and offshore areas so it can use up the rest of world's resources first.
Have you ever noticed how the price of gasoline seems to jump a few cents at the pump just before a holiday? The general public has, and people have come to expect it. It's just another way of being gouged by Big Oil. And it is another reason they won't give ear to the oil industry spokespersons when they talk about shortages and the need for a rational energy policy.
Information battle
Political agendas in Washington and a few state capitals—combined with an indolent national news media—have resulted in what we could say at best is a culture of misinformation.
I'll never forget watching a network news program one evening back in about 1980 when we were going through a particularly bad time with crude imports.
Incredibly, the reporter was at a New York City-area gas station interviewing the attendant about the fuel supply shortage. The man was an "expert" in the oil business because he had worked at that station for more than 20 years. The attendant told the reporter that "he knew as a fact" that oil tankers were circling out of sight offshore, waiting for crude prices to go up before unloading!
The information battle has been going on in the industry for 150 years. But it looks like credibility problems will dog the industry until the gasoline price hikes on holidays are irrelevant because everyone owns one of "those" caburetors.