Opening today is Pump, a documentary about the United States' almost universal dependency on petroleum. Directed by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, the film begins with a bit of history and some hard economic facts about its subject matter. We learn that the US government spends around $500 billion a year protecting—in the Persian Gulf alone—oil interests that have a yearly value of around $50 billion (this is really what capitalism looks like—not the market but the state is the center of this impossible system). We are also told about the famous and successful conspiracy between car, oil, and rubber corporations that brought to an end the golden era of the trolley system in the United States and replaced it with the dark ages of buses and cars.

But most amazing of all, the documentary claims that Prohibition in the 1920s was not really about improving American morality and health but about the future of car fuel. On one side was farm-made ethyl alcohol, and on the other side was oil. Henry Ford made some cars that used the former, and John D. Rockefeller, the owner of Standard Oil, wanted cars to use only the latter. Rockefeller deeply funded organizations behind the "dry cause," and ultimately he got what he wanted: the banning of alcohol for both cars and humans. This is the point at which oil began a domination over American society that has yet to see an end. (Ken Burns makes no mention of this shadowy scheme in his Roots of Prohibition, but he does point out that Henry Ford was all in for banning alcohol.)

Pump also points out that the consumption of oil plays a role in climate change—however, this point is made only once. What solution does the doc provide to this very bad situation? It's a very American one: keep cars but use cleaner fuels like methanol and ethanol. The problem, it claims, is really at the pump. Americans (the animal that loves choices) do not have enough real choices at the pump. The cars we use can easily be converted to run on these other and better fuels, but oil corporations and car corporations and the US government are preventing that from happening anytime soon. They all want us to stick with the bad and dirty stuff. Brazil, on the other hand, does offer its drivers choice at the pump (in the form of ethanol made from sugar cane), and so they have greater energy independence than the United States. (No Brazilian army bombing anything that moves in the Persian Gulf.) The US, the filmmakers argue, should follow Brazil's example. End of story.

Tellingly, the documentary makes no mention of public transportation as an alternative to personal transportation.