Push it here, it bulges there

"Should we buy a Prius?" the Missus asked the other night. It was the same day I gleaned these facts from the Washington Post and Fortune:

• At its current price of $2.70, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline is less than it was (measured in constant dollars) in 1982.
• Oil companies make about 13 cents on a gallon of gas. The federal government makes 18.4 cents. Forty-nine states make more than oil companies do on every gallon. New York collects 42.4 cents a gallon.
• In 1971, non-OPEC countries had remaining proven oil reserves of 200 billion barrels. Over the next 33 years, those countries produced 460 billion barrels and had 209 billion remaining. (OPEC nations experienced similar results.) In 1979 President Jimmy Carter said that oil wells were "drying up all over the world."
• America produces about 25% of the 20.6 million barrels of oil it uses each day. The estimated yield of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 10.4 billion barrels. That of the field discovered in deep water off Louisiana is 15 billion barrels.
• When ExxonMobil announced earnings of $39.5 billion in 2006 Hillary Clinton said, "I want to take those profits [belonging to shareholders of which you are, statistically, probably one], and I want to put them . . . into a fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy, alternatives and technologies that will begin to actually move us toward the direction of independence."
• Demand for ethanol—or perhaps demand for profits from the manufacture and sale of ethanol—has pushed the price of corn to $4 a bushel. Corn growers' total profits from 2007 could top $13 billion. (No word on whether Senator Clinton wants to "take" those profits.)
• The average price for a farmer to rent an acre of land in Martin County, Minnesota, has risen from $2,900 per acre in 2005 to $4,100 per acre today. Farm equipment prices have risen 20% since last fall.
• The rising price of corn used as animal feed (about half of all corn grown) has caused Campbell Soup, Hormel Foods, Smuckers, and Tyson to warn of higher food prices. The price of high-fructose corn syrup, of which the average American consumes 62.6 pounds annually (up from zero in 1966), has risen 53% in the last two years.
• A year ago, when corn was $2 a bushel and oil was $70 a barrel, ethanol plants averaged $1.06 in profit on every gallon of ethanol sold, or about eight times what oil companies earned for a gallon of gas. Now, with corn at $4 and oil at $60, they net about 3 cents.

What's my point? Do I think we should drill in the ANWR? No. Do I dislike Senator Clinton? Yes, but that's not important. Oil companies, environmentalists, and governments lie. Pick the lies you like best and choose your side. Just know the biggest lie of all is the notion of "energy independence."

It doesn't matter where you get it. It takes energy to make stuff go, to make stuff hot or cold, to make stuff light up. We need energy. Another definition of "need" is "to be dependent upon." In the economy, as in physics, there's no free lunch.

Will we buy a Prius? Maybe. Or an F-150. Haven't decided.

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Please let me know if you will or will not be expending energy at St. John's tomorrow. We tip off at 8:00 a.m., as usual.