Thar She Blows! The Whale Oil "Argument" And The Farce Of "Free" Market Miracles
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"The story should reassure present-day pessimists of the near miraculous power of technological advancement and pursuit of profit to save the environment," Medved wrote. This is bunk. The problem with the miracle whale oil story is it's irresponsible and historically fake.
It's irresponsible because kerosene did not replace whale oil. Whale oil production peaked 1845 at 17 million gallons selling for $1.50 or more per gallon. It was a boutique market even then; by 1859, when Drake struck oil, whales were scarce, the whaling fleet was in trouble and whale oil sales were at 7 million gallons a year and dropping. Whale oil was on the way out long before kerosene was on the way in [larger graphic].
Civil war tax
Meanwhile, new products were coming onto the market. One of these, "camphene," is almost unknown today but was by far the most popular lamp fuel in the 1840s and '50s. Made of turpentine and alcohol, camphene and similar fuels reached about 100 million gallons per year by 1862. That year, the oil industry got the first of many helping hands from Uncle Sam. Congress slapped a $2 per gallon tax on alcohol to help fund the Civil War, and that was that: Kerosene, taxed only at 10 cents a gallon, swept camphene off the market and into history books.
The idea that petroleum was a direct product of the free market is fake. In fact, the oil industry arrived on the gravy train of subsidy and policy privilege, and it has managed to hang on ever since, while at the same time claiming to oppose those awful subsidies. Just in 2011, in terms of real dollars, direct subsidies for fossil fuels were $500 billion worldwide – six times higher than the direct subsidies for renewable energy, according to the UK-based Overseas Development Institute.
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http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2014/03/whale-oil-myth
