President George W. Bush only had it half right when he said at this year's State of the Union address that America is addicted to oil. A newscaster reporting on the address later told the rest of the story: We're addicted to cars.
Not only do we suffer from car addiction, we also have a taste for gas-guzzling SUVs, Hummers and semitrailers. We're so far into our addiction that even the alternatives we have attempted to explore - such as ethanol-¡ or hydrogen BioDiesel - are really nothing more than automotive methadone rather than a cold-turkey solution.
Neither ethanol nor BioDiesel can satisfy our energy needs-¡ - gasoline contains far more energy than either - and hydrogen fuel cells are expensive and years from becoming a viable alternative. Also, because car and truck engines are designed to run on gasoline and petroleum diesel, they would have to be reconfigured to run on biofuels; car engines can't run on pure ethanol and truck drivers often complain that BioDiesel clogs engine filters.
To overcome this addiction, we need to rebuild our passenger rail system.
One thing I miss about living in China is that I could travel from one end of a country roughly the size of the United States to the other without ever setting foot in a car. I was able to travel in a nice sleeping compartment from Xuzhou, Jiangsu province to, Hami, Xinjiang - a distance of 2,130 miles - in only 38 hours and for less than $100. But in America, aside from some major metropolitan areas, especially in the Midwest, you're pretty much stuck without a car, but long-distance rail travel is still largely slow and unreliable.
This isn't good for our country. The lack of cheap, efficient and reliable mass transit restricts the movement of people, which doesn't help the economy because it makes commuting and traveling for pleasure more difficult and expensive. It contributes to urban and suburban sprawl, which wrecks the environment and ruins the community spirit that big cities have historically had.
The myth that Detroit has spoon-fed to us since the 1950s - that "freedom" means the mass ownership of personal, private automobiles and bloated, suburban lifestyles - does not constitute a sustainable way of life. The planet does not have the resources for everybody on it to live as we do.
As a private-public partnership, however, rebuilding our passenger rail network - which was the world's finest for much of the 20th century - would fight urban sprawl and alleviate the effects of rising gas prices. It would also give an enormous boost to our economy.
Laying double track to allow trains to move faster would create thousands-¡ - if not tens of thousands - of construction jobs. Building, upgrading and repairing locomotives and passenger cars could put unemployed industrial workers back to work.
It would also make the use of biofuels more realistic. Because most locomotives are diesel-electric, they could easily run on BioDiesel. Much of the track in the United States could also be electrified, which would lessen pollution.
We need a passenger rail system comparable to Europe's and China's. We need intercity trains that run several times a day rather than only once a day, allowing us to travel between Muncie, Indianapolis and Chicago for only a fraction of the cost of driving.
If we really want to overcome our addiction to oil, jetliners and biofuel-powered cars won't cut it in the long term.
Before we kick the heroin habit, we have to get rid of the needle.
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