We are about to take a long, dizzying trip through some current events.  We're going to start at oil prices, make our way through fuel conservation, take a brief rest stop at the pork store, and eventually find out way to the auto maker bailout.  Does that sound like fun? It doesn't?
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Hey, remember that Wired article about global warming that I got so worked up about? Well, I'm about to do my own version of it:

Don't bother with the hybrids.  Drive as much as you want.  Buy the biggest, fuel guzzling-est vehicle you can find.  Because nothing you do on the road is going to decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

HOLD ON A SECOND OBSCURECRAFT DOT NET. You've been telling me that I should be riding bikes to work.  You've been carrying on about GMs failure to follow through on the success of early electric vehicles.  You've been bitching about this for-ever.  And now you tell that none of it matters? DOES NOT COMPUTE. TRUTH LIE LIE TRUTH 0110110...

Calm down internet! Don't let my logical traps explode your brain.  Just lie down and have a frosty beverage - I will explain everything.

All that conservation we've been doing is great.  There's just one small problem; gasoline only represents one of the products that are made from a barrel of crude oil.  Diesel fuel and jet fuel, among many other things, are also made from each barrel of oil. 

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Let me try out an analogy on you.  When you slaughter a pig, you don't just make delicious bacon.  You also make pork chops, ham, Scrapple, hot dogs, and lots of other delicious things.  (Aside to Adam: come to Houston and make me pork chops please.) Now, imagine that we were sending millions of dollars overseas to import pigs.  If we wanted to cut down on foreign pig imports, would we have to stop eating just bacon? No, we'd also have to stop eating pork chops, hot dogs, and everything else that we make from pigs. Cutting down on bacon would reduce the price of bacon, but we'd need just as many pigs as we ever did. 

Gasoline? That's bacon.  And thanks to bacon, er, gasoline conservation efforts, demand has been flat, and prices have dropped accordingly.  But what about demand for oil? I will allow a recent Slate.com article to do some heavy lifting for me:

[G]asoline demand--both in the United States and globally--is essentially flat. Meanwhile, demand for the segment of the crude barrel known as middle distillates--primarily diesel fuel and jet fuel--is growing rapidly.

In June, the Energy Information Administration released its Annual Energy Outlook, which expects domestic demand for diesel fuel to grow about four times faster than that of gasoline through 2015. Looking further out, toward 2030, diesel demand is expected to increase about 14 times faster than that of gasoline. Indeed, by 2030, the EIA expects U.S. diesel consumption to rise by 51 percent over 2006 consumption levels while gasoline use will increase by just 3.6 percent.

In July, the Paris-based International Energy Agency released its medium-term oil market report, which said that "distillates (jet fuel, kerosene, diesel, and other gasoil) have become--and will remain--the main growth drivers of world oil demand." Between 2007 and 2013, the IEA expects distillate demand to increase nearly double while global gasoline demand will grow only slightly.

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As long as demand for non-gasoline oil products continue to grow, gasoline conservation efforts alone will do nothing to impact our dependence on foreign oil.  All the drill baby drilling in the world would not do a thing right now to lower the price of gasoline or to reduce our dependence on oil from petrostates (yes, that is a real word now - deal with it).  Ethanol? Hybrid cars? Electric bikes?  Throwing water on a fire that's already out while a house across the street is burning to the ground.

I'm guessing you have two questions: how do we put out the diesel fire, and when will I stop making so many strained metaphors? The second one is easy to answer: my metaphor well will run dry when hell freezes over.  The first one is obviously more difficult, but not impossible.  Again, I turn the heavy lifting over to someone else: take it away Jonathan Golob of Dear Science:

GM's heavy-duty hybrid technology would be far more revolutionary than Toyota's.

The Toyota technology can only be applied to smaller, lighter vehicles topping out at perhaps the Highlander SUV. Such vehicles are only suited to commuting. In contrast, GM's technology (developed with BMW and Chrysler) can be applied to huge vehicles like pickups, commercial trucks, and buses.

Why is the GM technology superior? The efficiency gains from hybrid technology are vastly larger in big vehicles. A Prius has only about a 20% gain in operating efficiency, compared to a similarly sized and shaped car. In contrast, the improvement for a full-sized pickup is more like 200-250%.

[...] The Chevy Volt drives its wheels only with electric motors, supplementing the energy stored in a modest battery pack with a gasoline-fired electric generator.

Electric motors produce all their torque right from the start, obviating the need for any sort of energy-sapping transmission system, particularly the ornate sort required when both gas and electric motors are driving the wheels.

Trucks are the commercial workhorses of the American economy.  And trucks run on diesel fuel.  But if we could start converting this fleet of vehicles to electric, then we can start throwing some water on the other problem.  Electric powered trucks with a diesel-fired electric generator to take over when the batteries run dry is a game-changing technology for how we transport goods.

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Oh, but wait.  GM might be around long enough to see the development of this technology through.  The big three American car companies have all asked Congress for financial help as part of the $700 billion economic bailout plan already approved.  Recent trouble in the financial markets has only hastened the inevitable result of years of poor management and an inability to keep up with the changing car market.

So, once again we are asked; to bail or not to bail?  After all, it is the fault of nobody but GM management that they decided to hinge their success on gas-needy SUVs while shunning technology that advanced fuel economy and sued to prevent mandated increases in MPG standards.  It is all to easy to say fuck 'em all.  Actually, I think I might already have said that.

Has GM learned their lesson?  I wasn't all that fond of the Chevy Volt when it was first unveiled at the Paris Auto Show earlier this year.  But just the same, I want to give them a chance to make this technology work.  It would be a shame to watch them peter out just when it feels like they might be turning a corner.

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Here, finally, is my point.  Give them the money.  But attach strings.  Strings! Strings everywhere!

Demand that any auto maker accepting bailout money meet more stringent fuel economy standards.  Really stringent.  30 MPG across the entire fleet in five years.  50 MPG across the entire fleet in 10 years. 

Demand that all lawsuits blocking attempts to raise fuel economy and emissions standards be dropped. 

And if they don't like the terms, then tell them to go pound sand.  We handed out money like it was going out of style to banks without demanding any meaningful regulatory changes.  We had leverage and we wasted it.  Don't do the same with the auto industry.  Now is a moment of opportunity for change (where have I heard that before)? Let's not waste it.