DISTINGUISH MUTUAL GAIN FROM CO-DEPENDENCY.  Lynne Kiesling recommends that reporters on the energy beat learn to do so.

I am listening to an NPR story right now on the conflicts over the construction of the new pipeline to bring Canadian heavy crude oil from the tar sands to the US. Steve Inskeep introduced the story by observing that as Canadian tar sands production increases, US consumers will “become more dependent on Canada”.

This error is more than just a rhetorical one; it’s an error of logic and a failure of basic economic understanding, because it shows that Inskeep and his staff don’t grasp the reciprocity and the mutuality of trade and exchange. You could just as easily say that more oil transactions between US consumers and Canadian producers makes Canada “more dependent on the US”, because the revenue they earn from selling us oil is income that they use to do what they want to do in their lives, in much the same way that the oil we buy from them is a product that we use to do what we want to do in our lives.

Failing to incorporate the reciprocity and mutuality of exchange into your analysis is an all-too-common logical flaw, particularly in the increasingly breathy and Chicken Little media. They should know better.

Perhaps politicians and policy wonks who like to speak of oil addictions are part of the problem, thinking of an oil abuser as somehow like an abusive and addicted significant other.

Co-dependency is a learned behavior that can be passed down from one generation to another. It is an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.

It's abusive, for example, for Latin American farmers to take our cash and keep us wired.

We may constitute only 5 percent of the world's population, but we consume fully a third of the planet's coffee. This nation runs off coffee, most all of it from a sketchy continent. Should we be cut off by one of these sources, for our caffeine fix we'd be forced to drink Coca-Cola for breakfast as well as 10 other times a day.

Our most recent census figures reveal that Detroit lost 25 percent of its population from 2000 to 2010, including those who moved from the city as a result of continuing dismal performances by the Lions and Pistons. And the great state of Michigan as a whole lost population and faces one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

Thus my administration will propose that we begin immediately to invest in this city and state and turn them into the coffee capital of North America. It will create jobs, jobs, jobs; stimulate economic development; and put Michigan back on the map. After all, it was a beer that made Milwaukee famous, and cows that turned Wisconsin into America's Dairyland. Why not think of Michigan when you think of mocha?

Co-dependency as a pejorative in economics? More likely, a "dependence" claim is "absurd and illogical."