Thursday marked the 150th anniversary of a seminal event in history: the birth of the oil industry. On that day in 1859, Edwin Drake struck black gold with the first commercial oil well - creating an industry that would provide the lifeblood for modern civilization.
And yet no one seems to care.
In previous generations, the birth of the oil industry was celebrated, and deservedly so. Oil has sustained and enhanced billions of lives for more than 150 years by providing superior, affordable, ultraconvenient energy - and is as vital today as ever.
The oil industry began its ascent by dominating the fast-growing illumination energy market of the 1860s. Producers of oil-based kerosene won out due to superior quality and price. Where whale oil was lighting homes for $3 a gallon in 1860, kerosene was lighting homes for 9 cents a gallon by 1880 - giving millions of Americans the gift of illumination at night.
In the early 20th century, as the electric light bulb outcompeted kerosene, oil producers focused on producing automotive fuel - and beat out steam, ethanol and - the front-runner at the time - electric batteries, through a combination of affordability, safety and convenience.
The availability of cheap, personalized transport is something oil makes possible, and something we should never take for granted.
As a gasoline marketer told a group of gas station attendants in 1928: "My friends, it is the juice of the fountain of eternal youth that you are selling. It is health. It is comfort. It is success. . . . You must put yourself in the place of the man and woman in whose lives your gasoline has worked miracles."
Oil also worked miracles for America's military in World Wars I and II. Vehicles powered by ample quantities of the most portable, highest-energy-density fuel gave them the enormous advantage of superior speed and mobility.
Many historians have argued that Allied nations' superior ability to produce oil was a decisive factor in both wars. In war, as in economics, having the cheapest, most convenient energy is a matter of life and death.
Today, oil brings even more value to our lives.
One underappreciated form is petroleum-based products. We live in a world where chemists are able to employ oil to suit any conceivable purpose, from making shatterproof glasses to ultra-durable synthetic rubber tires to medical implants to bacteria-resistant refrigerators to HDTVs to iPhones. Look in your home and you can find 100 things made of oil in no time.
And if you look at the "Made In" labels on everything you use - from your Asian electronics to your pineapple from Hawaii to your oranges from California to your beef from Omaha to your furniture from Sweden - you will begin to appreciate the system of global trade that could not exist without oil-powered transportation - the 800 million-plus planes, automobiles, trucks, ships and tankers that move men, machines and material quickly and cheaply.
Nearly every item in your life would either not exist or be far more expensive without oil; there is simply no comparable source of practical, portable energy.
Yet today people increasingly label oil a pollutant that damages rather than enhances our lives and, even worse, an addiction - likening our consumption of oil to a junkie's self-destructive heroin habit. This is profoundly ignorant, not to mention unfair to the petroleum industry that tirelessly innovates, year after year, to find more oil and extract it more efficiently.
Does this mean that no one should look for alternatives to oil? Of course entrepreneurs should - if they believe that they can truly match or exceed oil's value in the market. For example, if a liberated nuclear industry can provide ultracheap electric power that makes petroleum the whale oil of the 21st century, that will be something to celebrate.
Today, though, we should be celebrating petroleum - "the juice of the fountain of eternal youth" - and the industry, past and present, that uses it to work miracles in our lives.
Epstein is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, focusing on business issues. He is the author of multiple essays on the history of oil, including "Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company," in the journal "The Objective Standard."
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