Oil today is frequently described using words like “addiction” or “dependence.” The allusion to drug use is not an accident because these words naturally evoke apprehension even before considering the relevant facts. These terms should be immediately subject to suspicion given that oil, far from being a destructive drug, is a great source of benefit to human life.

The ways oil and other fossil fuels improve human life are innumerable, ranging from the obvious, like electricity and transportation, to the less obvious, like plastics and fertilizers. Oil is simply a means of providing energy, an essential human need, and labeling its use as an “addiction” is as senseless as doing the same to any other human need, whether it be food, clothing, shelter or oxygen.

So if we never hear of calls to reduce the human appetite for houses or air, why the insistence that disaster looms in every tank of gas? The first and probably most common objection to oil is that it brings environmental damage and climate change.

Although it is a complex topic, the existence, extent and actual threat of global warming because of burning oil is a far from settled and accepted scientific fact. Even granting for the sake of argument that oil use does cause some climate change, the question still remains as to what trade-offs mankind is willing to make for the benefits of abundant energy.

Taking human life as the standard of value leads to the conclusion that any harm done by using oil must be weighed against the enormous improvement it has had on our standard of living.

Human beings are successful at living to the extent that we are able to modify the environment to our benefit.

The environmentalist movement, which implicitly takes “Mother Earth” as the standard of value, is opposed to environmental modification, and its objections to oil use must be understood in that context. This is the reason that every known alternative energy source is met with still more objections, whether it be the danger to birds posed by wind power, the harm to fish caused by hydroelectric dam, or the desert holes filled with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

Another common objection to oil is the economic argument that because oil is a finite resource, its eventual depletion will cause economic collapse. The conclusion is that we must move to other energy sources — usually with the help of tax money and government regulation — before disaster strikes. This argument ignores many facts, the most important of which is that oil is a commodity like any other and is therefore subject to the law of supply and demand.

A decrease of supply relative to demand increases the economic incentive to find more oil and to develop alternative energy sources. The result is that by the time oil is no longer an economical energy source, the market will have created other industries and technologies to replace it.

Most advocates for an immediate switch to alternative energy sources don’t mention that oil is so widely used, not because of corporate conspiracy or government inaction, but because for many applications it is the best known substance for satisfying the human need for energy. All too often, the basic economics and science of energy use are ignored. Oil is simply much more cost effective and energy-dense than other energy sources.

Although batteries or fuel cells may be able to power a small car around town, they can’t power airplanes, 18-wheelers, tractors or freight ships.

This is not to say that future innovations can’t solve these problems, but much of the current hype about the promise of things like tidal generators and wind power borders is science fiction.

Until these facts change, wholesale abandonment of oil is bound to be premature and economically harmful.